Little Black Book

A melodic shrill woke me from my sleep. I wasn’t long in bed, having just completed a nightshift. I turned onto my back and rubbed my eyes as a single line of sunlight leaked through my curtains. I turned my head to see my phone lighting up on my beside table. The melodic shrill that had woke me was my ringtone. I must have forgotten to put it on vibrate. I grunted and glanced at the screen just in time to see that it said private number. I often got private number calls, it came with the territory of being a Doctor but if it was important they would ring back. So I shrugged and settled back into my pillows thinking they might just leave a voicemail. Barely a minute later the phone started ringing again. I covered my face with a pillow and let out a muffled yell then threw the pillow across the room in frustration and grabbed my phone. 

“Hello?” I tried to keep the anger from my voice but I didn’t quite succeed as the person on the other end hesitated. 

“Miss Grey?” A nervous sounding man asked. 

“Doctor Grey…but yes?”

“My name’s Carl Patterson and I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But your Great Aunt Martha Kerns has passed away. I’ve been left in charge of her estate and your name features,” he paused. “Are you available on March 15th at 9am to attend the Will reading?”

That caught me off guard. I had no idea who Great Aunt Martha was. She must have been on my fathers side. A side I knew nothing about as he died when I was five.

“I’ll have to check my work schedule. Can I get back to you in, say, 5 minutes?” I ask and he replies yes and I quickly grab a pen from my bedside drawer and write his number on my hand and hang up. I go into my calendar app, scroll through to March 15th… and of course, it was one of my very few precious days off. I roll my eyes but add in Will Reading to my schedule. I quickly ring Carl back. 

“Hello, it’s Doctor Grey. Yes, I can be there. What’s the address?” I ask and Carl gives me the address of somewhere in the city. My hand was pretty full by the time he had finished listing off what floor and room I needed to go to. 

When I hung up, I found a notepad and jotted down all the information from my hand onto the paper. I sat down at my desk and began to wrack my brain for any mention of a Great Aunt Martha but came up blank. 

‘Maybe they’ve made a mistake?’ I wondered as I repeatedly clicked my pen. I glanced at my alarm clock to find it was 9:43am, meaning I’d been in bed for less than 2 hours but I was wide awake now; confused as hell but very awake and curious. I made my way to the kitchen and flicked the kettle on. Making coffee was something I did on autopilot. I leaned on my kitchen counter, staring out the window at nothing in particular. 

Martha Kerns. Martha Kerns. Martha Kerns.

Her name circled in my brain until it began to blend together into one word. The kettled clicked off snapping me from my daze. I made my coffee then plopped down on the sofa. As I sipped my drink, my thoughts continued to swirl around my brain. 

‘Maybe mum knows her?’

I open my phone, went to my contacts and rang her number. 

“Hello love! Bit early for you, isn’t it?” 

“Hi, yeah it is. I just got this weird phone call from a guy called Carl Patterson. Says he’s in charge of the estate of someone who is apparently my Great Aunt Martha Kerns, ever heard of her?” I ask then take another sip of coffee. 

Silence. 

“Mum? You there?” I ask and lift the phone from my ear to check that I hadn’t hung up on her by accident. “Mum?”

“Yeah, yeah, still here. She was your fathers Aunt. Strange old bat. Never married, no kids. Came to our wedding dressed like she was at a funeral. Think she came to Christmas once, just after you were born but that’s about it,” mum replied in a shaky voice. 

“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked, my foot tapping with impatience. 

“It’s… it’s just an old rumour. Nothing really,”

I sighed heavily. “Just tell me, please,”

“There was a rumour that the man she was engaged to in her early 20’s died in unusual circumstances. Nothing more came of it. But she somehow got his house and money. But like I said…all rumours,”

“Well, this Carl fella says my name is in her Will. I’m going to a reading next week.”

We chatted a bit about what Carl Patterson said then general chitchat before hanging up. I decided to google Carl just to be on the safe side. He had a legitimate law practice at the address he had given. 

‘So at least it’s not a scam?’

The story my mum told me about Martha bounced around my head any time I paused my work. It was getting frustrating. I looked at my calendar and counted the days. 

‘5 days. Just 5 days then you’ll find out who this woman is…was. Maybe she’s left something valuable?’ 

That made me smile as my car insurance was due. My mind wandered with all the possibilities of what Martha Kerns might have  left me and my work was left undone. I daydreamed so long that my alarm to wake me went off, meaning it was 2:30pm. 

I made myself lunch, food for later and packed my satchel with everything I needed. I usually left the house around 4pm but I was too antsy and decided to leave for work early. 

I counted down each day. I didn’t know why I was so nervous. Maybe because I knew nothing about my fathers family. I didn’t know if I was going to be the only one there or if I was about to meet several new family members. 

My days played out slowly. But March 15th finally rolled round. I laid out my best suit and practiced introducing myself in the mirror. 

I had barely slept the night before. My mind wouldn’t settle long enough until I had given up trying at around 3am and decided to get some of my pent up energy worked off on my treadmill. 

***

I stood at my front door, hand on the doorknob, dressed in my suit with my satchel at my side. Then forced myself out the door. I caught the bus and counted my stops. Everything felt like I was watching someone else control my actions. 

I arrived at the legal aid office 15 minutes early and made my way to the office Carl had told me to. His receptionist pleasantly told me to take a seat. I was alone. No weird family members, no one who even looked like they might be even distantly related. My leg started to bounce with a mix of nerves and impatience. 

“Doctor Grey!” A small elderly man in a tweed suit greeted me as he opened his office door. I shook his hand and he motioned for me to take a seat at his desk and closed the door behind me. 

“Am…am I the only one?”

“Yes, it appears your Great Aunt was a rather solitary woman,” he said as he sat in his office chair that made him look even smaller. He lifted a thick paper folder from a drawer in his desk and opened it. “Shall we begin?” He asked briefly looking up at me. I nodded and inhaled deeply, there was no turning back now. 

“I, Martha Kerns, am writing My Last Will and Testament with sound body and mind on January 1st, 2000. As I have no heirs of my own, I leave my entire Estate to my Great Niece Laura Grey. My funeral has been arranged and paid for.” He reads and we stare at each other for a long while.

“That’s it?” I asked in disbelief. 

“Yes. It appears so. I have the address of the property, the financial gains and list of miscellaneous items that are included in her Estate,” Carl explained handing me the folder. The first page had an image of a decaying grand Victorian-era home with the estimated sale value which made me choke in surprise. “Would you like some water?” Carl asked, concerned. I shook my head and read the details of the house, it’s contents, other goods (which included an old but well maintained car) and the money I had been left. 

“Mr Patterson. Is this a joke?” I asked incredulously. 

“Of course not! I was Mrs Kerns lawyer for many years. I oversaw the Will signing,” he straightened himself in his seat. I’d clearly offended him. 

“I’m not being rude. It’s just… this all comes to a total of around 30 million pounds,”

“Correct. And my fees have already been paid. So…it’s all yours, Doctor.”

I started at the numbers on the page until they all blurred into one. 

‘How could my family not know that we had a relative that was swimming in money?’ I thought as Carl’s voice faded in and out. We discussed when I’d be able to pickup the cheque and keys to the house, then parted ways. 

When I got home I sat in awed silence for at least 2 hours, reading and rereading my copy of Marthas Will and everything I’d just inherited.

***

Two Weeks Later - 

I’d received the keys to the property and couldn’t wait any longer to have a look at what I had inherited. I drove several miles out into the country passed a mixture of large homes and farms until I turned onto a long gravel driveway that lead up to the house. 

The house itself looked even more run down than the photo in the Will but just as imposing. Ivy was covering most of the right side of the property, obscuring 1 or 2 windows. I parked my car and climbed the couple of steps to the front porch. I tried to look through the little window in the door but the inside was so dark that I could only make out the shapes of a few items of furniture.

I inserted the key and had to use my shoulder to force it to open before it creaked open and I was greeted with the overpowering smell of dust and damp that made my eyes water. I took my first tentative steps inside the large entrance hall. I found a light switch but when I flipped in on only 1 bulb illuminated on the grand light fixture above me. So I opted for using the flashlight on my phone. 

As I explored the house it became clear that Martha had been living in the back couple of rooms on the ground floor; the kitchen, a living room that was also set up as a bedroom and a small bathroom. These rooms weren’t as neglected as the rest of the home but just as cluttered. The rest of the rooms had dust sheets covering items of furniture, obscuring what they were. 

I had no idea what I was going to do with all this stuff. I didn’t know if any of the items were antique and valuable or just useless junk and this was just the ground floor and with the size of the building, I expected a lot more furniture and nicknacks…and there were at least 2 more floors to explore. 

I sat down on a worn, overstuffed armchair and began looking through some boxes stacked at its side. They were all filled with ageing photographs. Some had names and dates or places jotted on the back and others were blank. I started to notice reoccurring faces and then I found some faces I knew very well. I lifted out the photo that was of my parents and myself as a newborn. I felt a sad smile tug and my lips as I placed the photo back in the box. Martha clearly loved all these people, yet had somehow slipped into obscurity. 

That last box was heavier than the last few. It was jam packed with photos of, who I now knew to be Martha, in her younger years. Every few photos she was pictured alongside a new handsome man and it was clear all of them were infatuated with her. When I came to the bottom of the box I discovered why it was heavier than the others. There was a little journal style book bound in black leather with a small brass clasp. I popped it open and flipped through the pages. At first I thought it was an address book, as it was filled with names and numbers but upon closer inspection I realised all the names were male and the numbers were dates and then numbers under each name didn’t have the format of phone numbers. Some numbers were in hundreds others in thousands. There was page after page of the same thing. Then 1 number jumped out at me. 

It had a pound sign at the beginning. 

‘Mitchel Anderson, June 1975-February 1977, £12,300’

At first I was a little confused then it hit me like a steam train and I nearly dropped the book with shock. Martha had somehow been wrangling money out of these countless men for decades! ‘No wonder she had thirty million in the bank!’

I had no idea what to do with this information. No doubt a lot of these men would be elderly or even dead and there were no addresses or phone numbers. There was no way for me to get in contact with them to find out how and why Martha had their money. 

I pulled out my phone and started googling some of the names and just like I had guessed, most were dead. 

I say most because there were also a number of them talked about in news articles listed as missing or about their death being suspicious. 

‘Holy Hell. The rumours my mum spoke about… was there a chance they weren’t rumours at all?’

I sat back in the chair and looked around the room. This was a big house with a lot of rooms and I’m sure many closets. I just hoped I wasn’t about to find any literal skeletons in them.