Skulduggery Pleasant: Books 1 - 12. Derek Landy

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      The solicitor, a short man named Mr Fedgewick, with the girth and appearance of a sweaty bowling ball, tried smiling. “We still have one more person to wait on,” he said and Fergus’s eyes bulged.

      “Who?” he demanded. “There can’t be anyone else, we are the only siblings Gordon had. Who is it? It’s not some charity, is it? I’ve never trusted charities. They always want something from you.”

      “It’s, it’s not a charity,” Mr Fedgewick said. “He did say, however, that he might be a little late.”

      “Who said?” Stephanie’s father asked, and the solicitor looked down at the file open before him.

      “A most unusual name, this,” he said. “It seems we are waiting on one Mr Skulduggery Pleasant.”

      “Well who on earth is that?” asked Beryl, irritated. “He sounds like a, he sounds like a… Fergus, what does he sound like?”

      “He sounds like a weirdo,” Fergus said, glaring at Fedgewick. “He’s not a weirdo, is he?”

      “I really couldn’t say,” Fedgewick answered, his paltry excuse for a smile failing miserably under the glares he was getting from Fergus and Beryl. “But I’m sure he’ll be along soon.”

      Fergus frowned, narrowing his beady eyes as much as was possible. “How are you sure?”

      Fedgewick faltered, unable to offer a reason, and then the door opened and the man in the tan overcoat entered the room.

      “Sorry I’m late,” he said, closing the door behind him. “It was unavoidable I’m afraid.”

      Everyone in the room stared at him, stared at the scarf and the gloves and the sunglasses and the wild fuzzy hair. It was a glorious day outside, certainly not the kind of weather to be wrapped up like this. Stephanie looked closer at the hair. From this distance, it didn’t even seem real.

      The solicitor cleared his throat. “Um, you are Skulduggery Pleasant?”

      “At your service,” the man said. Stephanie could listen to that voice all day. Her mother, uncertain as she was, had smiled her greetings, but her father was looking at him with an expression of wariness she had never seen on his face before. After a moment the expression left him and he nodded politely and looked back to Mr Fedgewick. Fergus and Beryl were still staring.

      “Do you have something wrong with your face?” Beryl asked.

      Fedgewick cleared his throat again. “OK then, let’s get down to business, now that we’re all here. Excellent. Good. This, of course, being the last will and testament of Gordon Edgley, revised last almost one year ago. Gordon has been a client of mine for the past twenty years, and in that time, I got to know him well, so let me pass on to you, his family and, and friend, my deepest, deepest—”

      “Yes yes yes,” Fergus interrupted, waving his hand in the air. “Can we just skip this part? We’re already running behind schedule. Let’s go to the part where we get stuff. Who gets the house? And who gets the villa?”

      “Who gets the fortune?” Beryl asked, leaning forward in her seat.

      “The royalties,” Fergus said. “Who gets the royalties from the books?”

      Stephanie glanced at Skulduggery Pleasant from the corner of her eye. He was standing back against the wall, hands in his pockets, looking at the solicitor. Well, he seemed to be looking at the solicitor; with those sunglasses he could have been looking anywhere. She returned her gaze to Fedgewick as he picked up a page from his desk and read from it.

      “‘To my brother Fergus and his beautiful wife Beryl,’” he read, and Stephanie did her best to hide a grin, ‘“I leave my car, and my boat, and a gift.’”

      Fergus and Beryl blinked. “His car?” Fergus СКАЧАТЬ