‘There’s no doubt, I’m afraid.’
He gnawed a finger. ‘Then I suppose I ought to tell you first, before I do anything about it.’
‘Why don’t you tell me what your relationship was with Dr Rogers?’ Slider helped him along. He used that title since it seemed to be what Rogers had used with Maricas.
He pulled himself together. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll tell you the story from the beginning. You see, Dr Rogers came to see me about eight months ago. He was a walk-in – said he’d seen my sign from the road, and that he wanted someone to draw up his will.’
‘His will? You have his will?’ Slider couldn’t help himself. The whole business about the next of kin had been dragging at them since the beginning.
‘Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. He’d brought in his previous will, which left everything to his first wife—’
‘Amanda Sturgess.’
‘That’s right. But he’d divorced her and remarried and wanted to make sure his new wife would get his estate rather than Ms Sturgess. I explained to him that his old will would automatically be nullified by his remarriage, and that unless he had children or other relatives, his second wife would automatically inherit. But of course it’s always better to have it written down, and he said that’s what he wanted. He didn’t want there to be any doubt about it. So I made up the document for him. He didn’t have any other relatives, as it happened, so it was very simple, just leaving everything to his current wife.’
‘I didn’t know he had one,’ Slider said. Maricas handed the will to him across the desk, and he read it. It revoked all previous testamentary dispositions, named Henry John Duval Maricas as his sole executor, and left all his property, whatsoever and wheresoever situate, to his wife, Helen Marie Aldous of 23 Station Approach, Southwold.
Southwold. Southwold as in Suffolk. Now they had the Suffolk connection. Slider looked up. ‘The next of kin. You don’t know the trouble we’ve been to, trying to find out who his next of kin was. His ex-wife offered to arrange the funeral because we didn’t know of anyone else. Are you telling me this person doesn’t know about Rogers’s death yet?’
Maricas looked unhappy. ‘Well, I haven’t told her. I’ve explained why. If it had been a normal death or an accident I would have got on to her straight away today, as soon as I knew, but in the circumstances I thought I’d better speak to you first.’
‘I wonder she hasn’t contacted you.’
‘She may not know he’s dead yet. Not everyone reads the papers, you know. Or he might not have told her about me. People can be very funny about wills. They don’t like to think they’ll ever be needed.’
‘But I suppose he had a copy of it,’ Slider said. ‘I wonder why we didn’t find it. We had all the papers out of his house. His London house, I mean – presumably he owns the one in Southwold.’
‘He bought it, but he’d already gifted it to his wife, so it’s hers now.’
Hollis had been right, Slider thought. There was a whole other establishment – the ‘house in the country’. Probably all his missing gubbins were there. ‘Perhaps he keeps his copy of the will there,’ he said.
‘He told me that he was putting a copy in his safe at home. I just assumed he meant Hofland Crescent, because that’s the address he gave me as his. Southwold was always “my wife’s house”.’
‘We didn’t find a safe,’ Slider said, more to himself than to Maricas.
‘Presumably it was a concealed one,’ said Maricas, smiling a little, but still looking anxious. ‘He was a very cautious person.’
Slider nodded. They hadn’t stripped the house, because there had seemed to be no reason for it. If there was a safe there, what else might they find in it?
‘I haven’t told you everything yet,’ Maricas went on. ‘He said the reason he had come to me for the will was that he didn’t dare go to anyone who knew him. He insisted that I must keep the whole business secret. I had to type it out myself, and when he came to sign it, he came in a taxi and brought the taxi driver up to be the other witness. He didn’t want Maggie to witness it because he said he didn’t trust women. “They always talk,” he said.’
‘But why all the secrecy?’ Slider asked. ‘Did he explain that?’
‘He said –’ and here Maricas looked faintly apologetic – ‘that he was involved in important but dangerous work, and that there were people who might attack him through his wife if they knew of her existence.’
‘That’s a bit James Bond,’ Slider said.
‘I know, that was my thought too,’ said Maricas, ‘but he seemed quite sincere about it. I’m sure he believed it. I said if someone was threatening him he should go to the police, and he said that would be fatal. They mustn’t know he was wary of them, he said. And he said he was trying to get himself out of it, but it would take time and be difficult and dangerous, because everyone knew what the fate of whistle-blowers was.’
‘Whistle-blowers?’
‘That’s what he said. He wouldn’t tell me anything about what he was involved in, and frankly, although I believed him at the time, because he was obviously nervous, afterwards I thought he must be making it up. Exaggerating for effect, you know – to make himself important. But now—’ He looked seriously into Slider’s eyes, his own brown ones troubled. ‘But now, it looks as though he wasn’t kidding. I mean, someone cared enough about what he was doing to kill him.’
‘Yes,’ said Slider. And he thought about that single bullet to the back of the head. Too professional. Amanda had said there was a woman at the bottom of it, but it was much more likely to be money, wasn’t it? Putting aside the secret agent notion, had he been involved in some illegal but lucrative business, lucrative enough to kill him if he looked likely to pull the plug on it? But what the heck was it?
‘I feel so bad that I didn’t believe him,’ Maricas said. ‘So you see why I thought I should speak to you before I did anything?’
‘Yes, I think you did quite right,’ Slider said, and Maricas looked relieved.
‘He was very worried for his wife – afraid for her. He thought they’d go after her to get at him. He said no one knew about her and it had to stay that way. She even kept her maiden name so no one would connect her with him. So I was worried that if I contacted her now it might somehow draw attention to her. But she’ll have to be told – if she doesn’t know already. And other people will have to know, if the will is to go through probate. I mean, she won’t get his money until then, and he must have wanted her to have it, or why the will?’
‘It’s a tricky problem, I see that,’ said Slider. And he thought of Cat Aude. If the witness who was no witness had been murdered, in how much more danger was a wife? He might not have told his wife all about his ‘business’, of course, but the murderer or murderers wouldn’t care about that. They’d eliminate her anyway, just to be on the safe side. ‘You have no idea what it was he was involved in?’
‘No, he never said. Didn’t so much as give a hint.’
‘And do you think he told his wife about it?’