The Jewellery
In the Estate Form presented to the Probate Sub-Registry in Carlisle my mother's estate was estimated at £82,000 for tax purposes. This figure included the flat at Egremont (£72K, an underestimate by £5K), my mother's chattels at the house in Craig Drive (£4K) and my mother's jewellery collection at Craig Drive (£6K). Her jewellery collection included, among other items, a diamond ring worth £4,000 on its own. My mother had shown me this diamond ring in February 2006 on a day when I visited her at Craig Drive. It was a bright gold ring with a large sparkling diamond. She told me its value and she offered it to me to take away with me there and then, as my half share of her jewellery. I said she should show the ring to my brother Edwin first before I might accept it, and so the ring was left at Craig Drive. As events turned out, this was the last occasion I was to set eyes on this ring or any of her jewellery collection, except for her gold wedding ring (she was to hand her wedding ring to me for safe keeping when she was in hospital, around about a month before she died).
Six months after my mother's death, in January 2007, I visited my brother at Craig Drive in Whitehaven. I wanted to see my mother's jewellery collection again. While at the house I asked my brother if I could see my mother's collection of jewellery. My brother said "No", I could not, since it was put away upstairs. He said that if I wanted to see her jewellery, then I was to give him advanced warning. I left the house without seeing any of the jewellery. I found it odd that my brother couldn't be bothered to go upstairs and fetch it down for me to see. I put this down to his typical rudeness.
I again visited my brother at Craig Drive in February 2007, when the topic of my mother's jewellery came up again.
My brother said he had taken the diamond ring in my mother's jewellery collection to be valued. This was the diamond ring my mother had shown me and which she had told me was worth £4,000. Edwin said that at valuation the ring had been identified as a cheap foreign copy. My brother then asked me who I thought might have switched this copy for the real one. He suggested that maybe my mother's sister, my Aunt Betty, was the main suspect. He said, maybe it was one of my Aunt Betty's visits in 2006 to see my mother when she stayed at Craig Drive that was the possible occasion for when the switch of the jewel was made. I thought this was rather ridiculous, but by this stage I had given up trying to argue with my brother about anything. Edwin did not show me this "switched" diamond ring which, I presumed, was still upstairs at Craig Drive with the rest of my mother's jewellery. I was still not shown any of the jewellery collection by my brother, and it was pointless for me to ask him again if I could. Some months later, at the railway crossing in St Bees, Edwin was to take out a box from his pocket and show me this switched “diamond” ring, and indeed it was a ring made of dull silver metal with a poor looking glass “stone” in it – not at all the ring I remember my mother showing me before. So with that, that was that. Now, all my mother's jewellery collection (with the exception of her wedding ring) was in Edwin's possession, which is how it has remained. Needless to say, all the other chattels at the house in Whitehaven which made up part of my mother's estate were also now in Edwin's possession, as they still are today, as if there was ever any chance he might have shared anything with me. Also at the house in Whitehaven were items of mine which my mother had had in her safe keeping for me. Even when I asked Edwin for these to be returned to me, I got no answer from him. He still has them, or has thrown them away.