So You Received This Letter Today.

So You Received This Letter Today

Scene One: A Lawyer’s Office

“So you received this letter today. That is why you wanted to see me so urgently.”

The lawyer in the gray suit then picked up the letter, and read it out loud.

“Dear John:

I know that you will be surprised by this letter. You think I am visiting with my sick cousin Elizabeth for a week. But you are wrong. She is well. You were easily fooled. You are as gullible as you are charming and nice.

You see my grandmother included me in her will. I  would receive two and a half million dollars, but only if I were married to you, rather than just fooling around with you or anyone else. She thought that I was too wild and crazy to ever settle down. You might be thinking now that that might just be true. That part of the will is why I proposed to you only four  weeks after you and I met at the Toby Jug, where I walked up to you sitting at the bar alone, and said that I would buy you a drink. You looked lonely and susceptible. You know the rest of that story – a quick wedding in the town hall, and now just as quick an ending.

You must be wondering now where I am and, of course, whether I  have received the money. Your wife is now rich beyond her wildest dreams, and has moved to Fiji, where you will never find me.  So don’t you even bother trying.

Now you must be thinking that our month-long marriage was just a very bad, very stupid mistake on your part. In some senses you would be right, certainly regarding the happy ever after and the till death do us part bits. But in another way, you would be wrong, very wrong.

You see, you could benefit financially from this. You now have it in your power to get half a million dollars. All you have to do is agree to a divorce (which you do not have to pay for). If you want, there are pictures of adultery that can be sent to you. They were difficult and strange selfies, but you would get the picture right enough. You don’t have to receive them if you do not want to. It is up to you.

All you need to do now is send me a letter, witnessed, and signed by your lawyer, that you agree to do this. Then, within as a short time as possible, you will receive a cheque for $500,000 dollars. What do you say to that? Along with this letter you will see a formal document drawn up by my lawyer. The ball is in your court. You just have to sign on the dotted line for the document to be legally binding.

Your soon to be ex-wife

Agatha

The lawyer shakes his head and then speaks, holding up the legal document in his hands..

“So, although this situation is both unfortunate, sad, and somewhat tragic, this looks to be legitimate. My advice to you is to sign it. You really have nothing to lose at this point. She has left you, and that is not going to change. And you might have a lot, five hundred thousand dollars, minus my small fees, to gain. You should sign it.”

John signs the document, and puts it in the envelope that she supplied, complete with sufficient postage to take it express to Fiji. The letter is mailed before he gets home.

Scene Two: A Newly Enrichened John is at the Toby Jug Alone

A few weeks later, as promised, John received the money. He is back in the Toby Jug, where Agatha proposed to him not so very long ago. He is alone, drinking his beer, when he sees a young woman whom he had long fancied but had done nothing about before he had met Agatha. She is his ex-wife’s cousin Elizabeth, something he had learned at the wedding. She was the one that had supposedly been ill, but looks pretty good to him now. She is sitting by herself at the other end of the bar.

He picks up his glass of beer, and walks over to where she is sitting. He sits down beside her (like the nursery rhyme spider) and offers to buy her a drink. She answers with a question.

“So, aren’t you supposed to be ‘happily married’ to my cousin Agatha? What are you doing hitting on me. You should know better than that. What kind of husband are you anyway?.”

He replied by showing her Agatha’s letter, which for some strange reason he almost always carried with him. Elizabeth read it over two times, shook her head and then spoke.

“I can barely believe that she did that to you. I did think that the two of you got married awfully quickly. I’d always known that Agatha was impulsive, but still her proposal to you was a bit of a surprise.  You know at the wedding I wanted to tell you that I had often seen you in this bar, and (brief hesitation), that I rather fancied you. A couple of times here at the Jug I looked at you in what I thought was a rather charming flirty way. But you didn’t respond. I thought that maybe you liked being alone, so I stopped trying”. 

“Then Agatha came along and the two of you got together in lightning speed. I felt that you had ignored my flirting then because you were not interested in me in particular. But now things seem to have changed. You have changed. And your marital status is no longer a barrier to you and I maybe getting together. What do you think?”

He replies, “You know, I like what I hear you saying. I did fancy you too, long before I met Agatha , but I just didn’t have the nerve to approach you. Now things are different. And I am different.”

“You certainly are John. For one thing, you are half a million dollars richer. You should not spend that by yourself. You might need a little help with that.”

There was a brief pause. John wondered for a few fleeting seconds whether Elizabeth might be mercenary like her cousin Agatha. He thought, “John, maybe you should avoid her. Maybe she will treat you like Agatha did.”

But before he could decide what to do, Elizabeth flashed an engaging smile and said,

“You know I was only kidding you just then. I received a fair bit of money from our rich granny too. And, I would like to have someone help me spend it, someone like you. Actually not someone like you, but you specifically. I will have a Guinness. This one’s on you. But I will pay for all the rest.”

“You are certainly not your cousin, Elizabeth.”

“Yes, and you are no longer my cousin’s husband.”