Page 151 of Road Trip
“Er, yes.”
The next door down was a bathroom. It was the most modern room Maeve had seen so far, with a black-and-white penny-tile floor, a huge claw-foot bathtub, pedestal sink, and an odd-looking two-part commode with a pull-chain flush.
“How many bathrooms in the house?” Maeve asked.
“Two, I believe. One on this floor, one upstairs. Remember, this was the gardener’s cottage, so the accommodations are not what one would call deluxe.”
“No kidding,” Maeve said. She gave the commode a flush—just to make sure it worked. She looked closely at the bathtub. “There’s no shower attachment,” she said.
“Make a list, and we’ll get a plumber out,” he said, moving toward the back of the house and the kitchen.
The best thing Maeve could say about the space was that it was large, and there were windows. “New appliances,” she said.
He nodded, and looked up at the ceiling, which, though intact, showed water stains.
“Esme had a new roof put on very recently, but I suppose she saw no need to have decorators in for the painting and plaster repairs.”
“Something will have to be done about the cigarette smell,” Maeve said. “I could get lung cancer from the residual secondhand smoke. And it can’t be good for Sinead either.”
He sighed. “We’ll need to bring in a smoke remediation specialist. I’ll put it on the list.”
Maeve roamed around the room, taking it in. If she were to move in immediately, updating the kitchen and bathrooms would be a priority.
“What’s upstairs?” she asked.
“I’m not quite sure. Feel free to take a look, but if you don’t mind, I’ll stay down here and start making notes of what will need doing.” He pulled his cell phone from his jacket and began typing.
The second floorof the cottage was plainer and more utilitarian than the first floor. She counted three bedrooms, all in various degrees ofdisrepair, and a bathroom, which looked straight out of the Victorian era.
Maeve stood in the middle of the bedroom at the front of the house. The paint was peeling, the floors were coated in dust, and at least three rooms’ worth of furniture seemed to have been warehoused here. She counted two mahogany four-poster bed frames, several dressers, rolled-up rugs, an armchair with threadbare upholstery, and a dressing table with a cloudy mirror attached. There were cardboard boxes full of knickknacks, clothes, shoes, dishes, and toys.
There was a tiny closet, stuffed full of generations’ worth of clothes, and in a corner stood a trio of field hockey sticks and even an ancient wooden tennis racquet.
Still, the room would have nice morning light, and more importantly, it did not reek of smoke. This would be her room, she decided, and if there was money in the budget, a subject she needed to broach with Billy Mac, she would have the smaller bedroom next door converted into a closet and master bath—with a shower.
The bedroom on the other side of the hallway, which was the same size, could be converted to a master suite for Therese’s use. She clicked off some frames with her camera.
By the time she rejoined the solicitor downstairs, her head was overflowing with plans for making the gardener’s cottage her own—and her sister’s.
“Ready?” Billy asked. He was holding a plastic bag in his hand. “Mousie’s been hard at work. Her body count is up to three already.”
“I’d still like an exterminator,” Maeve said. “I’ll never sleep a night here if I think I hear rats or mice running around.”
“On the list already,” he said cheerfully. “Want to take a walk about the grounds? They were really quite lovely, back in the day. Wonderful peonies and roses and such.”
“Another day,” Maeve said. “Billy, I’m concerned about what it’s going to cost to make this place livable. Although this inheritance is a gratifying surprise to Therese and me, we’re a little terrified to discover what the tax implications are going to be. We’re already struggling with the taxes on my mother’s estate in Savannah. We’retwo single women, neither of us currently employed. We’re not, and never have been, wealthy.”
“Yes, we do need to have that conversation,” he said. “I don’t have a complete accounting yet of the worth of Esme’s estate, but I can, as you Americans say, ballpark it for you.”
“Esme led Therese to believe that she sold the painting of Lady Geraldine because she was nearly destitute,” Maeve said.
The solicitor threw his head back and laughed so hard tears streamed down his cheeks. He extracted his handkerchief from his face and mopped them away.
“My dear, people who have generational wealth—the kind the Rossingtons had—hold very different standards of wealth and poverty. Esme was definitely not a Guinness, but she also wasn’t a pauper. I can tell you that there are significant assets in the estate, and the tax burden will not leave you and your sister ‘house poor’ after all the tax matters are settled.”
“That’s a relief,” Maeve said.
He removed the skeleton key from his pocket, and they walked out the front door. “What about Mousie?” she asked.
