Heir Presumptive

by Henry Wade

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Eustace Hendel, head of the younger branch of a rich and titled family, suddenly realises that, as the result of a holiday accident, the question of the succession to the entailed estates holds more than just academic interest for him. Eustace is in financial difficulties, and in love; all his problems would be solved were he himself heir presumptive to old Lord Barradys. Other members of the elder branch are still living - but accidents do happen. Yet Eustace is not the only family member with an interest in the inheritance . . .

Release date: June 14, 2016

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

“HULLO, Eustace; bad business this about your cousins.”

“Cousins? What cousins?”

Eustace Hendel looked across at the speaker from the table where he was listlessly sorting over illustrated papers. He had just come into the smoking room of the Jermyn Club and had been vaguely
conscious that one or two members had looked at him curiously from their deep armchairs.

“You’re related to old Barradys, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Why? What’s he done? You don’t say he’s passed out at last?”

“No, not he, but his grandson has, and great grandson, too. Howard Hendel and his son. Drowned down in Cornwall.”

“Good Lord!”

“Sorry about it, Hendel”, grunted an old member. “Near relatives, are they?”

“Oh, no, pretty distant cousins; I don’t quite know how we stand. We’re both descended from the first Lord Barradys. How did it happen?”

“It’s in the evening papers—Late Edition; not the 6.30, I think.”

Eustace Hendel picked up a couple of evening papers and retired to a corner where he could read them without interruption, though his fellow-members did not usually take so much notice of him
even as they had tonight. He found what he was looking for on the front page of the Evening Planet.

SHOCKING BATHING FATALITY

FATHER AND SON DROWNED

“A tragic accident occurred at Coombe Cove on the south coast of Cornwall at an early hour this morning, when Mr. Howard Hendel, grandson and heir of Lord Barradys,
and his only son Harold were drowned while bathing before breakfast. Details of the accident have not been received but it is understood that Mr. Howard Hendel’s body has been recovered,
but not that of his son. An inquest will be held tomorrow and it is believed that the funeral will be at Coombe on Thursday or Friday.

“Mr. Howard Hendel was managing director of the great north-country engineering firm of Hendel Brothers, of which Lord Barradys is chairman. Lord Barradys, who was ninety this year, is
the third baron, being the grandson of Andrew Hendel, the founder of the firm, who was raised to the peerage by Queen Victoria in 1852, the year of his death. Lord Barradys’s only son,
the Honble. Albert Hendel, died in 1893 and the late Mr. Howard Hendel then became heir to the barony. The new heir is Captain David Hendel, who served in the Coldstream Guards from 1913 to
1921, and who now lives at Clarge Hall, Market Harborough. He married in 1914, Beryl, only daughter of Sir John Fastings, of Coote, Denbighshire, and has one son, Desmond, who was born in
1915.”

Eustace Hendel put down the paper and started thinking. He was not conscious of any great feeling of grief. He had seen very little of his cousin Howard and could only remember
his boy as a brat in a sailor suit—he must be nearly grown up now, though. He had always regarded that branch of the family—the elder sons’ branch—as prigs, and he was aware
that they regarded him as something equally unpleasant in the other direction. Still, it was a bit of a shock, and he felt genuinely sorry for Blanche, Howard Hendel’s wife; she was a
fine-looking woman and had always been decent to him—the only one of ‘that branch’ who had.

The Hendels had always followed a strict family tradition in their treatment of elder and younger sons. Old Andrew Hendel, who, from a humble beginning as a fitter’s mate, had founded the
great Hendel business and with it the family fortunes, had been proud of his title and had laid down a principle that the barony was to be maintained and developed in a proper degree of grandeur,
but as a man—and a working man at that—he had firmly believed in boys having to make their own way in the world; all the money, therefore, had gone with the title, generation after
generation, while the younger sons were given a good education and a modest nest egg, and told to make their own way in the world.

1In this way, of old Andrew’s sons, Bevis, the elder, had succeeded to the title and a modest fortune; Frederick had been killed in a pit
explosion at the age of twenty-five, as a mining engineer, learning one stage of one branch of the family business; Augustus, Eustace’s great-grandfather, had been a doctor and had built up a
modestly successful practice in Newcastle-on-Tyne. In Bevis’s, the ‘Baron’s branch’, title and money had gone to Chandos, the present Lord Barradys, while Henry, the
younger, had become a solicitor only slightly above the ‘pettifogging’ grade. Of Augustus’s two sons, to whom in any case there was no title and only very modest moneys to
descend, Clarence, the elder, had burnt his small patrimony and left nothing to his son, Victor, who had left but little more to Eustace; Hubert, the younger, had done rather better and his son
William was now a fairly prosperous wine-merchant in London.

Eustace, therefore, had started life with little more than his good looks and by no means negligible brains; he had elected to follow in the footsteps of great-grandfather Augustus, and his
father’s legacy—Victor had been killed at Suvla in 1915—had just sufficed to carry him through his medical training and buy him a small share in a country-town practice. Here his
brains and ability would probably have kept him in reasonable comfort and an obscurely safe existence, but his other inheritance—his good looks—had intervened; by good luck, or ill, he
had attracted the attention of a rich widow, who had made a pet of him, showed unmistakable signs of adopting him as a husband, and then conveniently died, leaving him the staggering sum of twenty
odd thousand pounds.

That was the end of Eustace’s ‘safe and obscure existence’. He had given up his practice, sold his books and instruments, come to London, and taken a flat in St. James’s,
from which he began the inevitable and rapid rake’s progress which, eight years later, had landed him at the modest age of thirty-five in the hole in which he found himself to-day.

Sitting in the deep leather armchair at the Jermyn, Eustace’s thoughts had not followed the whole course of family history recounted above, but they had brought him to the same finish. He
stirred restlessly and pushed the evening paper on to the floor.

How, he wondered, would this news affect him? Would it affect him at all? Certainly Howard Hendel would have left him nothing; Howard had never made any attempt to conceal his opinion of
Eustace. The death did mean that there were two male Hendels less in the world, and that might mean more for the survivors when old Barradys died. Unfortunately there was no reason to suppose that
the head of the family had any better opinion of Eustace than had his grandsons; generations of north-country non-conformity were in his blood and he was probably a bigger prig even than Howard. In
any case the old man must be pretty well ‘ga-ga’ by now and that probably meant that no new will would be valid.

If only the whole lot of them had been drowned at the same time! Not only Howard and his son, but David and his son too—and the old man! Then everything would have come to him,
Eustace. At least he believed it would. He had never been very knowledgeable about that sort of thing; with all those male descendants in the direct line there hadn’t seemed the smallest
chance of his succeeding and he hadn’t bothered to work it out. But he did know that he was descended from old Andrew, the first peer; from Andrew’s third son, Augustus. The second son,
Frederick, had died unmarried, so if the first son, Bevis’s, line died out, surely he, Eustace, would succeed?

Stop a minute, though; old Chandos had had a brother, Herbert or Henry or something with an H. He was dead now, but his descendants might succeed before the descendants of old Augustus. Eustace
had never heard of any descendants of Henry—or was it Herbert?—but admittedly there might be some without his knowing it. Probably he would find out at the funeral. He would have to go
to the funeral, hellish nuisance though it was. It might be a chance to get back into the family graces, and that was more worth bothering about now. He must get back to his rooms and see what
he’d got in the way of mourning garments. Nearly time to dress anyhow.

Eustace Hendel heaved himself out of his armchair and made for the door. The old member who had condoled with him on the loss of ‘near relatives’ gave him a friendly nod; decent of
the old boy; he had never taken any notice of Eustace before.

Out in the hall, Eustace made for the racks on which hung hats and coats, mostly of sombre blue or black. His own grey herring-bone looked uncomfortably shabby in the hard electric-light. A hand
seized his elbow.

“Hullo, old man; going off to celebrate?”

Eustace looked round. It was young Priestley, who had first told him the news. One of the few members who was friendly nowadays, but—perhaps for that reason—Eustace did not value the
friendship very highly.

“Celebrate what?” he asked shortly.

Priestley chuckled.

“Don’t be a hypocrite, old man,” he said. “Two steps nearer the throne, aren’t you?”

Eustace felt his heart give a little throb. Was there something in it, then?

“What . . . what do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, that only leaves David and Desmond. Desmond’s as good as dead and David isn’t likely to marry again. And then you’ll be Lord Barradys, what?”

“I didn’t know you knew my family so intimately”, said Eustace, wondering why he should feel irritated.

“Oh, I was in the Coldstream in the war—strictly ‘duration’ of course, not my line in peace-time. I was in David’s company for a bit.”

“Were you really?” Eustace felt his irritation die down. This might be useful. “I shouldn’t have thought you were old enough to have served.”

The two men were out of the club by now, walking up towards Piccadilly.

“Well, I didn’t actually get to France”, said Priestley. “I joined the Household Brigade Cadet Battalion at Bushey. David Hendel was home wounded and commanding one of
the companies till he was fit. Dashed bad luck that the war ended, before I could get out. What about you? We must be much of an age.”

“I missed it too,” said Eustace drily. “I was trying to become a doctor and that takes time, even if there is a war on. I’m getting on this bus; see you at dinner,
perhaps.”

He jumped on to a No. 25 and was borne away, leaving Priestley—‘young’ only among the rather hoary veterans of the Jermyn—standing on the pavement, looking rather
surprised.

Again Eustace wondered why he should feel so annoyed. Priestley meant well enough, was really quite a good fellow. But it was obvious that his claim of friendship with ‘David’ was
pure eyewash; hundred to one that David had never realised his existence, and an eighteen-year-old cadet didn’t mean much to a war-worn Regular captain. For a moment Eustace had thought that
Priestley might be useful to him—in some way yet unrecognized; the fact that he obviously wouldn’t be was no doubt the cause of his annoyance.

The No. 25 bus took him to Holborn, and from there he walked to his rooms in Bloomsbury—not the part of Bloomsbury that was fashionable even to-day, but uncomfortably near the edge of
Finsbury. These rooms marked a definite step in Eustace’s downward career, but for all that they were the fruit of necessity they had been chosen with great care, after profound deliberation.
As his income diminished, Eustace had surrendered one luxury after another; his two horses at Bicester had gone first—hunting was not in his blood and he was even secretly glad to see the
last of a horse’s ears; then had followed his gun in a Hampshire syndicate—a wrench, but not shattering; then, in quick succession, two expensive ‘friends’—though here
the ‘giving up’ had not initiated from him; the sacrifice of his Bentley had been a real blow—the sense of power and speed was like fire in his veins; to lose that leaping, vital
car—far more a living entity to him than any horse—had been the bitterest blow of all to Eustace.

Then had come the question of his rooms; the rent of a good St. James’s flat is a formidable item in a dwindling budget; a bad one is not worth having. As his income diminished Eustace had
begun to augment it by ‘his wits’, which meant impressing rich young men and quietly—and quite legally—relieving them of some of their surplus wealth. For that game one must
inspire confidence, and nothing does this more assuredly than a good address—a solid, permanent-looking anchorage. Expensive hotels are no use for this purpose; the greenest youth knows that
they are no criterion of respectability; but a sedate, ‘established’ flat in the Albany or in one of the quiet streets of St. James’s, with a well-trained man-servant to add the
finishing touch, would inspire confidence in the most suspicious pigeon.

Eustace’s quiet games of bridge and poker in that flat had become well-known, perhaps too well-known for his liking, but there were always ‘suckers’ to be found. To give that
up meant a definite loss of income, but it had to go—the whole establishment, well-trained man-servant and all. Wages can remain in arrears for a time, though not indefinitely; rent of an
expensive flat cannot. At a month’s notice—and he was lucky to get that grace—Eustace had had to look about for something else.

He had thought over the problem carefully and decided that if he must give up living in St. James’ he would move to Bloomsbury but keep his St. James’s club, the Jermyn. He had
hunted the neighbourhood of Russell Square and at last, a good deal nearer Gray’s Inn Road than he liked, had found two rooms kept by a couple of whom the wife was a fair cook and the husband
a really clever and reliable valet. The last was an important consideration; to be well turned out was no less vital to a man of Eustace’s profession—his new profession; it had never
occurred to him to return to the hard struggle of medical practice—than to have a good address. To be reasonably well-fed by Mrs. Drage was fortunate; to have his clothes properly brushed and
pressed and cared for by her husband was nothing less than a godsend.

His decision to remain a member of the Jermyn was a matter of policy, but it had very nearly been an academic one. Rumours of Eustace Hendel’s little poker parties had got about, had
eventually reached the ears of the Committee of the Jermyn. That body had discussed the question of asking for resignation, but—being reasonable men—had come to the conclusion that it
was unjust to judge a man on rumour alone and decided to take no action; the fact that a judge and jury had recently awarded substantial damages in a somewhat similar case may or may not have had
something to do with that decision. But if the Committee had to consult discretion, the members were under no such obligation. Most of them had always wondered how that fellow Hendel had ‘got
in’, and had been no more than blankly polite; now they found it unnecessary to go so far. George Priestley and a few of the younger members had remained friendly, and as Eustace only used
the club for writing letters and an occasional dinner, a certain chilliness in the atmosphere had not seriously worried him. ‘Jermyn Club’ on the note-paper was what he wanted, and it
was worth fifteen guineas a year to him.

EUSTACE HENDEL set out for Paddington at a distressingly early hour on Friday morning in anything but a cheerful frame of mind;
he was, in fact, both angry and frightened. On Wednesday evening he had dropped seventy odd pounds over a little game at a friend’s house, and most of the seventy had gone to a young man whom
he had thought he had in his pocket. An occasional loss was good for business, of course—it established confidence; but seventy was definitely too much in the present state of his finances.
That had been irritating enough, but Thursday had been worse. The morning post had brought him an ugly letter from a ‘private banker’, demanding immediate payment of interest on a loan
or an interview within twenty-four hours. Eustace had not got the money; he had expected to provide himself with it the previous night, and instead of that had lost all that he had been scraping
together over nearly three months. He had nothing to talk about, no suggestion to make, so he had ignored the request for an interview.

Instead, he had gone round to seek comfort and consolation from his girl and had received instead something very like a blow on the other cheek. Jill Paris was fond of him—so she had
frankly assured him—but she could not live on air. If Eustace could not do something more regular and substantial about an income, she would have to return to work. Jill’s profession
was the stage, but by preference she ‘rested’, under suitable protection. She was an attractive girl, though not so young as her slim figure, blue eyes and cindered hair made her look.
As an actress she had front row legs and ability; as a protégée she had a temper, genuine affection, and a fair appreciation of the ethics of the game. Eustace liked her a
great deal better than the much more expensive and less intelligent Sylvia Vaughan and Denise Herron who had preceded her; the idea of losing her—and return to work meant inevitably a change
of friend—was almost more than he could bear.

Finally, as he swallowed a boiled egg and scalding coffee at little after seven that morning, Eustace had inadvertently opened another letter from his ‘private banker’ and received a
shock from which, as he paid off his taxi at Paddington, he was still struggling to recover.

Coombe, on the south coast of Cornwall, is nearly three hundred miles from Paddington, and in order to get there even by mid-afternoon it was necessary to catch a very early train—very
early, that is, for a man of Eustace Hendel’s manner of life. The 8.30 a.m. would reach the junction fifteen miles from Coombe at 2.30 p.m. and from the junction a service of cars had been
arranged, the funeral being timed for 3.30. Naturally, it would not be possible to get back that night, so Eustace was taking a suit case, with sleeping things of necessity, and with evening
clothes in case by any chance someone asked him to stay with them—though he hardly thought that likely. On the platform there was a fair sprinkling of people in black clothes, and among them
Eustace noticed two or three unmistakable Hendel noses—the hooked, rather predatory nose that looked so much more aristocratic than the family history warranted.

Getting into a first-class carriage was an obvious member of the ‘Baron’s branch’—the fair-haired line. This particular one, wearing a brushed-up moustache which
suggested a Guardsman, was probably David, the brother of Howard and the new heir to the title. Eustace wondered that he had not gone down sooner. He had not seen David for a number of years, and
but for the nose might not have recognized him. With him was a woman of about forty and a boy of, probably, seventeen. Eustace did not know who these were. David’s wife had died two or three
years ago and his son was certainly older than this boy and was in any case a chronic invalid. Unwilling to court a snub in his present temper, Eustace passed the carriage without further notice
and climbed into a neighbouring ‘first-smoker’ which was occupied by an elderly dried-up man of professional aspect.

Nobody else entered the carriage, and as soon as the train had shaken itself free of the gloom of Paddington Station the elderly man laid down his Times and looked across at
Eustace.

“I feel sure that you must be a Hendel”, he said, “and by your dark colouring, one of the younger branch. If I may hazard a guess, you are Eustace, son of Victor, grandson of
Clarence, great-grandson of Augustus—and so back to Andrew, the first peer.”

Eustace laughed.

“You know more about us than I do myself”, he said. “I am Eustace, and definitely one of the younger branch.”

“And I am William Christendome, senior partner of Christendome and Booth, solicitors. My firm has been in charge of the affairs of the senior branch of your family since the days of Bevis,
the second baron.”

Eustace pricked up his ears. Here was the very man to give him the information he wanted. But he would have to go tactfully; family solicitors did not, he believed, like to be pumped.

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Christendome”, he said. “Bad business, this. D’you know at all how it happened?”

“A bad business indeed, Mr. Eustace. A more tragic blow to the elder branch of a distinguished family it would be difficult to imagine.”

Mr. Christendome wiped his gol. . .