Skulduggery Pleasant

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Oh. Then that would make me seem kind of odd, wouldn’t it?”

“Well,” Stephanie answered. “It would help.”

“Gordon used to talk about you all the time, boast about his little niece. He was an individual of character, your uncle. It seems that you are too.”

“You say that like you know me.”

“Strong-willed, intelligent, sharp-tongued, doesn’t suffer fools gladly… remind you of anyone?”

“Yes. Gordon.”

“Interesting,” said the man. “Because those are the exact words he used to describe you.” His gloved fingers dipped into his waistcoat and brought out an ornate pocket watch on a delicate gold chain.

“Good luck in whatever you decide to do with your life.”

“Thank you,” Stephanie said, a little dumbly. “You too.”

She felt the man smile, though she could see no mouth, and he turned from the doorway and left her there. Stephanie found she couldn’t take her eyes off where he had been. Who was he? She hadn’t even got his name.

She crossed over to the door and stepped out, wondering how he had vanished from sight so quickly. She hurried down the stairs and reached the large hall without seeing him. She opened the front door just as a big black car turned out on to the road. She watched him drive away, stayed there for a few moments, then reluctantly rejoined her extended family in the living room, just in time to see Fergus slip a silver ashtray into his breast pocket.

2 (#ud181e78f-86f7-5bc1-afdb-36f4b0d1225e)

THE WILL

Life in the Edgley household was fairly uneventful. Stephanie’s mother worked in a bank and her father owned a construction company, and she had no brothers or sisters, so the routine they had settled into was one of amiable convenience. But even so, there was always the voice in the back of her mind telling her that there should be more to her life than this, more to her life than the small coastal town of Haggard. She just couldn’t figure out what that something was.

Her first year of secondary school had just come to a close and she was looking forward to the summer break. Stephanie didn’t like school. She found it difficult to get along with her classmates – not because they weren’t nice people, but simply because she had nothing in common with them. And she didn’t like teachers. She didn’t like the way they demanded respect they hadn’t earned. Stephanie had no problem doing what she was told, just so long as she was given a good reason why she should.

She had spent the first few days of the summer helping out her father, answering phones and sorting through the files in his office. Gladys, his secretary of seven years, had decided she’d had enough of the construction business and wanted to try her hand as a performance artist. Stephanie found it vaguely discomfiting whenever she passed her on the street, this forty-three-year-old woman doing a modern dance interpretation of Faust. Gladys had made herself a costume to go with the act, a costume, she said, that symbolised the internal struggle Faust was going through, and apparently she refused to be seen in public without it. Stephanie did her best to avoid catching Gladys’s eye.

If Stephanie wasn’t helping out in the office, she was either down at the beach, swimming, or locked in her room listening to music. She was in her room, trying to find the charger for her mobile phone, when her mother knocked on the door and stepped in. She was still dressed in the sombre clothes she had worn to the funeral, though Stephanie had tied back her long dark hair and changed into her usual jeans and trainers within two minutes of returning to the house.

“We got a call from Gordon’s solicitor,” her mother said, sounding a little surprised. “They want us at the reading of the will.”

“Oh,” Stephanie responded. “What do you think he left you?”

“Well, we’ll find out tomorrow. You too, because you’re coming with us.”

“I am?” Stephanie said with a slight frown.

“Your name’s on the list, that’s all I know. We’re leaving at ten, OK?”

“I’m supposed to be helping Dad in the morning.”

“He called Gladys, asked her to fill in for a few hours, as a favour. She said yes, as long as she could wear the peanut suit.”

They left for the solicitor’s at a quarter past ten the next morning, fifteen minutes later than planned thanks to Stephanie’s father’s casual disregard for punctuality. He ambled through the house, looking like there was something he’d forgotten and he was just waiting for it to occur to him again. He nodded and smiled whenever his wife told him to hurry up, said “Yes, absolutely,” and just before he was due to join them in the car, he meandered off again, looking around with a dazed expression.

“He does this on purpose,” Stephanie’s mother said as they sat in the car, seatbelts on and ready to go. They watched him appear at the front door, shrug into his jacket, tuck in his shirt, go to step out, and then pause.

“He looks like he’s about to sneeze,” Stephanie remarked.

“No,” her mother responded, “he’s just thinking.” She stuck her head out of the window. “Desmond, what’s wrong now?”

He looked up, puzzled. “I think I’m forgetting something.”

Stephanie leaned forward in the back seat, took a look at him and spoke to her mother, who nodded and stuck her head out again. “Where are your shoes, dear?”

He looked down at his socks – one brown, one navy – and his clouded expression cleared. He gave them the thumbs-up and disappeared from view.

“That man,” her mother said, shaking her head. “Did you know he once lost a shopping centre?”

“He what?”

“I never told you that? It was the first big contract he got. His company did a wonderful job and he was driving his clients to see it, and he forgot where he put it. He drove around for almost an hour until he saw something he recognised. He may be a very talented engineer, but I swear, he’s got the attention span of a goldfish. So unlike Gordon.”

“They weren’t very alike, were they?”

Her mother smiled. “It wasn’t always that way. They used to do everything together. The three of them were inseparable.”

“What, even Fergus?”

“Even Fergus. But when your grandmother died they all drifted apart. Gordon started mixing with a strange crowd after that.”

“Strange in what way?”

“Ah, they probably just appeared strange to us,” her mother said with a small laugh. “Your dad was getting started in the construction business and I was in college and we were what you might call normal. Gordon resisted being normal, and his friends, they kind of scared us. We never knew what they were into, but we knew it wasn’t anything…”

“Normal.”

“Exactly. They scared your dad most of all though.”

“Why?”

Stephanie’s father walked out of the house, shoes on, and closed the front door after him.

“I think he was more like Gordon than he liked to let on,” her mother said quietly, and then her dad got into the car.

“OK,” he said proudly. “I’m ready.”

They looked at him as he nodded, chuffed with himself. He strapped on his seatbelt and turned the key. The engine purred to life. Stephanie waved to Jasper, an eight-year-old boy with unfortunate ears, as her dad backed out on to the road, put the car in gear and they were off, narrowly missing their wheelie bin as they went.

The drive to the solicitor’s office in the city took a little under an hour and they arrived twenty minutes late. They were led up a flight of creaky stairs to a small office, too warm to be comfortable, with a large window that offered a wonderful view of the brick wall across the street. Fergus and Beryl were there, and they showed their displeasure at having been kept waiting by looking at their watches and scowling. Stephanie’s parents took the remaining chairs and Stephanie stood behind them as the solicitor peered at them through cracked spectacles.

“Now can we get started?” Beryl snapped.