A woman says she married a man thirty years her senior while in significant debt, and that after his death his lawyer presented her with a small wooden box rather than a will. 😨

They had met at a charity function where she was working. She describes him as wealthy, widowed and isolated, and states that his children believed she was pursuing his money.

At the wedding his daughter told her she would receive nothing.

Her husband responded only that she would get exactly what she deserved. He died six weeks after diagnosis. She attended the lawyer’s office after the funeral, where his children were already present and a wooden box was on the desk.

The box contained a brass key and a sealed letter written three weeks before his death, stating that he had not resented her honesty about her reasons for marrying him and describing the care she had provided during his illness.

The letter instructed that the key opened a safe-deposit box and that his children were required to attend. At the bank the box was found to contain property documents, investment accounts and a photograph of him some thirty years earlier beside a woman closely resembling her, inscribed on the reverse. She notes the lawyer’s reaction and the daughter’s. The inscription’s meaning is deliberately left unrevealed.