Can anyone help me find this book or author. Exquisitely elegant writing - I only found it as an audio book on cassett tape in the Atherton Library, Queensland Aust but it had been culled when I went back to get the details. What I remember:
Title: possibly “The Quiet Man” or “The Quiet Gentleman”
Author: possibly Forrester or Foster or something like that
Setting: UK – London
Characters – in order of appearance:
A doctor – Harley Street specialist
The Gentleman
His chauffer
A nun and some orphans
His butler and the butler’s wife
His 2 lawyers
His sister and her husband and son
A private detective
Boat captain & crew
The Story:
A respectable, older, well to do gentleman is in his doctor’s office being told he has only a few months to live as he is dying of cancer.
He takes it stoically – stiff upper lip and all that.
He leaves and as he is being driven home, the car stops as a nun and some orphans in her care are crossing the road. One of the little boys stops to stare at the flash car and pokes his tongue out. The man decides, then and there, what he will do.
He mortgages his houses, lands & sells up the portables eg coin collection, artworks etc converting everything into cash. He then buys lots and lots of platinum – because it does not have to be registered as does gold.
He calls his lawyer and makes out a new will. He then sits in an easy chair in his study, loads his shotgun and kills himself.
The relatives gather to hear the will. He did not get on with them – despised them and they him.
The funeral proceeds as the gentleman directed in his will. His body is to be put into a specially prepared lead coffin and dropped off the coast into the deepest water that can be found. He specifically directs that the relatives must be the ones that push his coffin into the water. If his relatives do not do this, the inheritance goes elsewhere. They agree to the terms and hire a boat to take them out to sea and the very heavy full lead coffin goes overboard.
The relatives find that, though they get everything, it’s all mortgaged – the whole estate is in deep debt and worthless. They hire a private detective to find out what happened to all the money.
After much investigation the detective reports that as far as he can tell all the money was converted into large sheets of platinum which seemed to have been welded together into a very large, very heavy box looking object.
The relatives stagger under the blow – they believe that all the money was spent on making a solid platinum coffin which is now at an unrecoverable depth in the sea.
Title: possibly “The Quiet Man” or “The Quiet Gentleman”
Author: possibly Forrester or Foster or something like that
Setting: UK – London
Characters – in order of appearance:
A doctor – Harley Street specialist
The Gentleman
His chauffer
A nun and some orphans
His butler and the butler’s wife
His 2 lawyers
His sister and her husband and son
A private detective
Boat captain & crew
The Story:
A respectable, older, well to do gentleman is in his doctor’s office being told he has only a few months to live as he is dying of cancer.
He takes it stoically – stiff upper lip and all that.
He leaves and as he is being driven home, the car stops as a nun and some orphans in her care are crossing the road. One of the little boys stops to stare at the flash car and pokes his tongue out. The man decides, then and there, what he will do.
He mortgages his houses, lands & sells up the portables eg coin collection, artworks etc converting everything into cash. He then buys lots and lots of platinum – because it does not have to be registered as does gold.
He calls his lawyer and makes out a new will. He then sits in an easy chair in his study, loads his shotgun and kills himself.
The relatives gather to hear the will. He did not get on with them – despised them and they him.
The funeral proceeds as the gentleman directed in his will. His body is to be put into a specially prepared lead coffin and dropped off the coast into the deepest water that can be found. He specifically directs that the relatives must be the ones that push his coffin into the water. If his relatives do not do this, the inheritance goes elsewhere. They agree to the terms and hire a boat to take them out to sea and the very heavy full lead coffin goes overboard.
The relatives find that, though they get everything, it’s all mortgaged – the whole estate is in deep debt and worthless. They hire a private detective to find out what happened to all the money.
After much investigation the detective reports that as far as he can tell all the money was converted into large sheets of platinum which seemed to have been welded together into a very large, very heavy box looking object.
The relatives stagger under the blow – they believe that all the money was spent on making a solid platinum coffin which is now at an unrecoverable depth in the sea.
However, it is not so. The author takes the reader back and shows how it was all a ruse and the platinum was converted into money which was then given to the orphanage. The coffin really was lead.
