As the other younger ladies were all fighting to maintain their equanimity, Jane and Elizabeth led them out into the gardens to watch Tommy who was being chased around by his nursemaid.
Lady Catherine watched her niece and the Bennet sisters exit the house with a gimlet eye from the window in her bedchamber. Only a few more hours and everything would be hers. She would order everyone out of her house and then put her revenge in motion. For the first time since her brother and sister-in-law had denied her the honour of being the hostess to the callers and sent her to her rooms like an errant young girl, she smiled to herself as she thought about everything which would be hers.
How much pleasure she would have dividing the estate in Bedfordshire into farms and selling them off one by one. She would finally be able to order the gardens as she wanted, and redecorate her houses to reflect her status. Everything she desired was a few hours away.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Mink’s small conveyance arrived right behind Rumpole’s; neither knew who the other was.
Even though Lady Catherine had objected to Mr. Bennetbeing present for the reading of thewill, he was present with her brother and three nephews.
When she was joined by her solicitor, Lady Catherine looked around the room triumphantly as if she knew something no one else did. “Shall we begin?” she suggested not able to hide the anticipation in her voice.
“Catherine, when we arrived, you intimated that the house was yours,” Matlock began evenly. “As you had not heard de Bourgh’s will read, how could you know that?”
“That is because Mr. Mink had sent me a note telling me he received a new will from my late husband only a day before his unfortunate death,” Lady Catherine asserted. It went over her head any note sent to Rosings Park would have been checked by one of the guards.
The Earl turned towards the man standing next to Lady Catherine. “What is the date of the will you hold Mr. Mink?”
Mink made a show of opening the forged document and perusing it. “Ah, here it is. The tenth day of October of this year, my Lord.”
“That is indeed dated after the one I have for my late client,” Rumpole confirmed.
“Then we agree the one I hold is the most recent one,” Lady Catherine crowed. “What did my late husband write, Mr. Mink?”
“Mr. Mink, before you inform us of the contents of the document you hold, are both you and Lady Catherine willing to swear it is genuine?” Rumpole questioned.
“You are not interrogating a witness at the Old Bailey now, Mr. Rumpole,” Mink sneered. “However, yes I will attest to that fact.”
“As will I,” Lady Catherine added with a smug smile.
“How is it you came to be in possession of it? The late Sir Lewis never mentioned you to me,” Lord Matlock queried.
“When he wrote and told her he wanted to revise his will, Lady Catherine requested he send the document directly to my office. It arrived with his letter of explanation only yester-afternoon.” Mink held up the letter Lady Catherine had written to accompany the will. He was sweating a little now, not as sure of himself as he had been.
“What does it say?” Rumpole enquired.
“It lists all of the de Bourgh property, the houses, estates, and liquid assets, and leaves all to Lady Catherine de Bourgh née Fitzwilliam,” Mink summarised the contents of the forged will.
“As such I want all of you off my property forthwith,” Lady Catherine demanded.
No one moved. How was it that her orders were being refused, they were trespassing.
“We have a slight problem, well a few actually.” Rumpole nodded and one of the footmen relieved Mr. Mink of the will and letter he had been holding and handed them to Rumpole who held the forged documents next to the genuine one on the signature page.
Matlock, Bennet, two Fitzwilliams, and Darcy all reviewed what Rumpole indicated. “The signatures are forgeries on both documents, they are not even close to the real one,” Matlock announced.
“Of course, they are not the same,” Lady Catherine barked out as she thought how to save all which was her due. “My late husband was sick, why would you expect the signatures to be exactly the same?”
Bennet turned to Matlock with an amused gleam in his eye. “What say you Matlock? Is it possible the signature is not even close to de Bourgh’s due to the fact he was already in heaven on the day these works of fiction were dated? The fact the signature on thesupposedwill was not witnessed is immaterial at this point.” He turned around and looked at thecringing solicitor and a shocked Lady Catherine.
“That cannot be! I dated it two days before…” Lady Catherine blurted out before she realised what she had said and closed her mouth.
“Your late husband and daughter passed away on the ninth of this month as the signed death certificates attest,” Matlock boomed. “Did you think your husband was not aware of your forged will and of this scoundrel who assisted you? Why do you think my late brother planned you would be told he and Anne passed away some days after the real date? In addition, he had a genuine copy of his will filed with the courts, just in case. And Catherine, one of our men was engaged as the express rider to deliver your secret letter you had this useless man post for you.” Matlock held the offending missive up. “By now your hired assassin will be in custody. Do you think he will trade his neck to tell us all about what you paid to have done ten years past?”
Mr. Mink tried to run towards the doors but he was knocked down by a footman and was soon bound and carried away.
All Lady Catherine could do was splutter. “My plan was perfect,” she mumbled.
