'Well, I knew who Harvard was, and I was tempted. I thought things over. I knew that Caesar himself was dead by that time, so I decided not to report Romilly's death to the relatives, but to hang on and see what transpired. Once the old man himself was dead-and that was the time for the benefits to be shared out-it seemed to me that, if I chose to represent myself as Romilly Lestrange, there wouldn't, most likely, be anybody to gainsay it.
'Well, as I told you, things didn't go any too well, and I cleared out of Kenya and went to Natal. I took care, when I got there, to let the lawyers know where I was. I knew that Lestrange had never communicated with them direct, so that there was no chance they'd recognise a forged signature. You can work out the rest for yourselves.'
'We'd rather hear it from you,' said Kirkby. 'Do go on. You chose to pretend that you were Romilly Lestrange.'
'Yes, well,' said the pretender, 'I couldn't see that it would do anybody any harm, and I thought it might do me quite a lot of good, if I could pass myself off as Romilly. Then came the business of the girl Trilby-Rosamund to you-who turned out to be the heiress. By the time I heard from her I'd bought a small property in Yorkshire (with my own money, I might tell you) and had decided to stay in England and settle down. I'd given the lawyers my address at their request, and they, it seems, had passed it on.'
'Miss Lestrange wrote to you, then?'
'She did. She pointed out that, with the exception of some cousins whom she didn't know, I was her only surviving relative, and she asked whether she could come and visit me. Naturally, I was a bit flummoxed by this, but, as I thought it might look suspicious if I refused to see her, I wrote back to say that she would be welcome, and she came along.'
'Was Judith living with you at the time?' Dame Beatrice asked.
'Yes. I met her and Luke, my servant, in South Africa. We're not married, neither is she anything more than my housekeeper, no matter what you may think. I suppose Trilby has told you something different, but that is the truth. Well, Trilby came to see us, but Judith didn't like the Yorkshire house, so when Galliard Hall came on to the market for rent, not purchase, we came down here, and Trilby came along with us. That was just over a year ago.'
'For rent?' repeated Dame Beatrice. 'Did that include the furniture and the fittings?'
'Yes. Why do you ask? It included everything. The lawyers gave me excellent references, especially as Trilby was with me.'
'It would account for the pictures which the real Romilly Lestrange would have recognised, although you did not. What made the owners leave such valuable paintings in the house?'
'They are travelling abroad, and are spending time with relatives in America and Australia. I have the house on a three-year lease and everything in it is fully insured, or so the owners told me. I've never bothered to check.'
'Clear, so far,' said Kirkby. 'Please go on.'
'I don't know what more there is to tell you.'
'Oh, surely!' protested Dame Beatrice. 'The mysterious letter summoning my assistance in treating Rosamund, the mysterious shot at me through the bedroom squint, the mysterious business of the death of Willoughby, the question as to whether he and his brother were or not invited to join the house-party, the mysterious assertion that Rosamund had formed the habit of drowning things...'
'Oh, well, as to all that,' said Romilly, 'I have no explanation to offer, except that I was in a pretty desperate strait when I sent for you. Trilby had already tried twice to kill me. That girl is utterly depraved and evil.'
'Tried to kill you, sir? Why haven't we heard anything about this before?' demanded Kirkby.
'Don't be a fool!' said Romilly roughly. 'How could I bring the police in on my affairs? Now that you know all the rest about me, I can tell you about the devilish girl, but I didn't want the police poking about while I was passing myself off as Romilly Lestrange. I knew he had relatives all over the place, and I thought the less publicity my affairs had, the better it would be for me.'
'Chapter and verse might be desirable, Mr de Maas. Will you tell us about the times when Miss Rosamund tried to kill you?'
'Once when she enticed me to bathe with her and then deliberately tried to drown me...'
'Do not tell me that you were the life-sized baby doll!' said Dame Beatrice. 'It seems a wildly inaccurate description, except for the first adjective.'
'And the other time was when she fired at Dame Beatrice, thinking it was at me,' went on Romilly. Then, perceiving his error, for he remembered that Rosamund had known perfectly well that his original room had been allocated to Dame Beatrice during her stay and that Rosamund had visited her there for the so-called treatment, he amended his statement hastily. 'No, I'm getting mixed up. Not that time. At an earlier date. That's why I hung the picture in front of the aperture. It could not be dislodged from behind, from the other side of the hole, you see.'
'You indicated to me that you knew nothing about the squint,' said Dame Beatrice mildly.
'I know, I know. One had to do some quick thinking.'
'I found the bullet. It came from a .22. How would Rosamund gain possession of a sporting gun?'
'How should I know? She's as cunning as a monkey. I searched her room, of course, and found nothing, but there are several guns in the smoking-room and she had the run of the house.'
'I wonder you risked allowing her another opportunity, sir, by filling the house with a number of her relatives, any one of whom might have been suspected.'
'What could I do? Besides, the more the family got to know me as their uncle, the safer my position became, I thought. In any case, on this second occasion, I took the best precaution I could. In fact, I was determined to bring matters to a head. I intended to have an experienced, unbiased witness present.'
'Oh, really, sir? Who was that?'
'On my own responsibility, and without reference to Trilby, I invited Dame Beatrice to join us. I knew that if anybody could put a spoke in Trilby's wheel, she could. Of course, I had to find some reason for inviting her, a reason I knew she would accept, so I told her Trilby needed psychiatric treatment, which, in my opinion, she does. The wretched girl must have seen through my little ruse, and took a pot-shot at Dame Beatrice through the hole in the wall. How did you manage to escape?' he asked, breaking off his narrative to ask the question.
'By a slight re-distribution of the effects of the bedroom,' she replied, 'that is all.'
'Well,' said Romilly, turning again to Kirkby, 'what are you going to charge me with this time?'
'Nothing, sir, if you pay back to the lawyers the sum which you say that they paid to you under the terms of Mr Felix Napoleon's Will, and which you state is lying untouched at your bank. My assignment at present is to find the murderer of Mr Willoughby, not to prosecute you for false pretences. That can come later, if need be.'
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
COUNTRY DANCE-MAGE ON A CREE
'He at Philippi kept
His sword e'en like a dancer.'
King Henry V.
(1)
'And how much of that tale do we believe?' asked Laura, when Dame Beatrice had described the interview.
'Time will tell us that, child. There are two things to be done at present, as I see it. The first is to talk to the man Luke.'
'But I thought you indicated that he is Romilly's tool. That being so, can we believe what he says?'
'In this instance I think we may.'
'You want to find out about the letters of invitation, I suppose?'
'Yes. It is not clear to me why he should have mentioned to the two maidservants that, so far as he knew, Hubert and Willoughby had not been invited.'