Seeing that stuff answered a question that had occasionally nagged at me since mum had passed away. I remembered my mother wearing some of the pieces Georgy was looking at, but after her death they were gone.
I’d just assumed they were lost and gone forever, stolen and fenced by that fat little fuck-weasel, but thankfully my mother had been astute enough to get them out of his reach before he or anyone else could get their mitts on them. Good on you, Mum!
I had to smile at the sight of Georgy playing once again with the baubles and glittery brooches Mum used to dress her up in when she was a little girl. Of course, back then she couldn’t possibly have known what they were or how valuable they were; they were just sparklies to make her look like a princess.
I looked in wonder at the rows and rows of huge white, blue, yellow, and pink antique-cut Edwardian diamond rings and pendants, emerald and ruby-encrusted bracelets, platinum tiaras set with spray upon spray of white diamonds, gold necklaces made of cascades of sky-blue sapphires, pearls, diamonds, and rubies set in elegant and artistic gold and platinum rings, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and huge, glittering brooches, and stunning diamond, sapphire, and emerald bracelets.
All of those fabulous, incredibly beautiful examples of the jeweller’s art just stashed in the house blew my mind.
I did a quick costing in my head, and whistled; there had to be several million pounds sitting in that tray; just the matching gold, emerald, diamond, and guilloche enamel bracelet, necklace, brooch, and earrings set Georgy was playing with, from a green sharkskin case with ” ” stamped on it must have been worth something in the high six-figure range, I’d watched enough “Antiques Roadshow” to work that out, and there were more than a dozen similar cases.
Georgy was busy opening boxes and smiling at pieces she remembered playing with when she suddenly stopped and stared at me.
“Will, this is all your family’s heirlooms, we can’t just keep this here, it’s not really ours, is it? This is for you to pass along to your descendants, this is the Wilmot legacy!”
Aunt Kay stepped up and put her hand on Georgy’s shoulder.
“Lift the tray, please baby-girl, there’s more in there.”
I noticed a pair of recessed handles in the sides of the case, so Georgy and I lifted it out, and gasped again: stacked in the trunk immediately under the jewellery were bundles and bundles of banknotes packed in so tight there was almost no room to move them. I whistled as I flipped through one slim stack of crisp banknotes: two hundred 50 notes bound together, and the others all looked to be the same, so 10, 000 per stack.
There must have been several hundred bundles stacked up and crammed in there, taking up all the spare space in that enormous trunk. I did a quick calculation based on the number of bundles in a single stack and whistled again: I guessed there were maybe six hundred and fifty or more bundles of notes, which meant there was something over six million in cash staring at us.
Together with that tray of amazing antique and Art Nouveau jewellery, especially those Faberge and Lalique pieces, and the incredibly ornate Tudor and Renaissance pieces it meant that somewhere around ten or twelve million pounds had just been handed to us.
When I told Georgy my best guesstimate of what was sitting in front of us she slumped back in stunned amazement.
“Where… how… when… ” she stammered, completely lost for words. Aunt Kay slipped down next to her and hugged her, calming her down.
“Why didn’t mother just leave this lot in the bank? It would have been safer there, surely?” I asked, wondering why this fortune in gems and cash had been stashed in the house at all, it wasn’t exactly the most secure place in England.
“Think, Will,” chided Aunt Kay; “If this had been left in the bank it might have been listed and taxed as being your poor mother’s personal assets and not part of the trust at all. Your mother and her original firm of investment counsellors and solicitors made use of some unique, but perfectly legal conditions and tax exemptions to sidestep the costs that might otherwise be levelled against this estate. She knew what she was doing when she settled the family trust on you, and the way she did it, otherwise the Inheritance Tax might have taken all of this away from you. This estate is worth many millions, but your family didn’t actually have very much cash money compared to the value of the trusts; it’s all tied up in investments and linked trusts that you can’t touch until probate is proved.”
She paused, her eyes far away, and her expression sad, but determined.
“Right now, Will, the land rents and farmland leased out to farming is what keeps this place afloat. If your mother hadn’t named you as a trustees of your respective family trusts in such a unique way the tax man would be totting-up how much this place is worth right now so he can come calling, and he would have stuck you with an Inheritance Tax bill based on forty percent of the gross value of the entire Wilmot estate, this house, all the land, everything that would have been your inheritance, Will. Plus all your mother’s own family holdings, which should go to both of you, plus what Georgy would inherit in her own right from her father’s Lassiter family trusts.”
She waved a hand at the trunk, at the jewellery.
“All this would have been eaten up, plus more you just don’t have.”
She looked pensive.
“Right now, the estate, your mother’s investment trusts, and the various family trusts, both Wilmot and your Lassiter family trusts, Georgy, all the offshore accounts that… that animal was trying to get his hands on, and all their incomes are being tabulated and investigated by the Court of Probate, and because of the value of all those trusts and all the trust holdings, it might take a couple of years to prove both your inheritances. The tricky part is going to be releasing those offshore accounts; they’re held in places like the Cayman Islands and Barbuda, and include all the cash investments your mother made to keep you children solvent in the case of her death. They’re all tied to provenance of the trusts; once you get them, all the other cash accounts become yours too, all you have to do is show up, hand over the papers from the courts, and the money becomes yours, because your mother made sure of that.”
She smiled wistfully.
“Your mother and I spent a lot of time with her investment advisors and private bankers getting this all in place; trusts this large don’t prove overnight, which is why all this money is here right now; it’s to keep you going until probate is proven. Once they rule, the Wilmot family trust will devolve to you, Will, it’s a family trust with only one named trustee, you, and the same with Georgy’s inheritance and her own family trusts, so no inheritance tax attaches. You will each just take over administering the various family trusts held in your names from your mother’s stewardship according to those unique, but completely legal, conditions and processes I told you about. Your mother knew the value of what you see here might conceivably have been assessed as true income apart from the trust by both the Court of Probate and the tax-man and gobbled up, so your mother removed it from possible scrutiny and kept it intact for you.”
She patted my arm reassuringly.
“The safest place for it was right here, sweethearts. The estate can’t be sold off piecemeal to generate income, it’s held in trust for you and future generations by covenants and deeds that predate Magna Carta, it would take an act of Parliament and Royal Assent to stand them down, and you can’t do anything until the Court rules anyway, so this jewellery and cash, for now this is your real inheritance, the jewellery to keep safe and pass along, and the money to spend as you see fit. Hopefully this money will keep you and your home afloat until you can assume full rights and access to the family trusts.”
I watched Georgy absently fondling some of the more beautiful pieces, beautiful toys she obviously remembered from her childhood, and wondered what we were going to do with this stuff. If the jewellery was indeed my family’s legacy, then I couldn’t sell any of it any more than mother could have done.
It was being left to me to guard and pass down the generations, not squander, so the best thing to do to preserve it for future generations was to lock it up again and put it somewhere safe. For now, we’d both have to live off just the money instead; it was the only possible solution.
“Let’s put this back for now and go back downstairs, okay?” offered Aunt Kay, “you children need to make some decisions now, let’s see what we can come up with.”
*****
As we trooped down the stairs Georgy once again held my hand, but it felt… different, not like me leading my little sister around, it was somehow more… adult, intimate, almost, and that confused me. Georgy seemed to be feeling something similar, if her sidelong glances and periodic tightening of her fingers around mine were any indication.
I found myself studying her features more closely, noting the play of her lips as she smiled or spoke, the extraordinary length of her lashes, the fairness of her skin, the way she tossed her hair over her shoulder as she spoke, the deep midnight blackness of her hair. I’d been seeing all these things for years, but suddenly now I was focusing on them, on her, and I really didn’t know why.
When we got down to the floor where our bedrooms were Georgy peeled off, saying she was going to get dressed, and Aunt Kay and I continued on down to the sitting room. After the morning’s revelations I felt like some coffee was in order, so we retired to the kitchen to sit and drink coffee together like families do. Aunt Kay smiled at me over the rim of her coffee mug.
“Okay Will, I’ve seen that face before, tell me what’s going on with you. Is it the money? Don’t feel guilty about it, sweetheart, it’s yours, left to you to take care of you and Georgy; maybe now you can pay interior decorators and proper tradesmen to finish renovating your house. You know you’re going to need help, sweetheart, you can’t run this place and try and do all that work there as well, so what’s your take on all this?”