“No, though I daresay he’d like to,” said Tarrant. “He’s contesting on grounds of unsound mind. Old Sir John threw himself overboard in mid-Atlantic, from the S.S. Atlantis.”
“Really! Poor old boy! That certainly was rather odd,” said Miss Phipps distressfully. “Why did he do that, do you think?”
“I don’t know, and seemingly nobody else knows either,” said Tarrant. “The very day after that incident in the Strand, old Sir John Kebroyd made a new will, leaving twenty thousand pounds to Mary Fletcher Arneson. And the day after it was signed, he booked passage to New York on the Atlantis, and the day after that, he sailed on her. There was no reason why he should go to the States, and he didn’t even tell his son he was going. There was certainly no reason for him to throw himself overboard — which, mark you, he was actually seen to do. But why did he do it? He was rich, and healthy for his age; his wife died many years ago, but he had his son John William, and some grandchildren, to care for. The son is contesting the will, as I say, on grounds of unsound mind, and Mary doesn’t want to accept the legacy. But his throwing himself overboard,” continued Tarrant, “doesn’t really surprise me. A man who leaves half his estate to a girl he’s never spoken to, and only seen for a couple of minutes, would do anything. It’s true he may have thought she saved his life. And perhaps she did,” commented Tarrant. “As Mary tells the story, she only helped John William to save it, but I expect she did most of it. But as Sir John threw his life away the very next week, that doesn’t solve the mystery.”
“Oh, come!” said Miss Phipps, smiling. “It’s not really very mysterious, is it? A good deal of it is quite clear. Enough, at any rate, to show that your Mary is quite entitled to her legacy. Half the estate — that’s so significant.”
“Miss Phipps!” gasped Tarrant. “Upon my word! Really! No, it’s intolerable! You say the story’s clear to you? Perhaps you’ll explain, then, first, how Sir John knew Mary’s name and the name of her nursing home. They were both in the will, in full.”
“My dear boy!” expostulated Miss Phipps. “That part is as clear as crystal. Didn’t you say a policeman came and took down their statements? Mary gave her name and address to him. Americans usually (and very sensibly) give their names in full, and of course the old man heard her.”
“Of course! How stupid of me,” said Tarrant, blushing.
“They say,” commented Miss Phipps, “that love is blind. Perhaps that explains it. But what have you done towards solving the mystery?”
“What would you have done?”
“I should have taken the first train to Yorkshire,” snapped Miss Phipps.
Tarrant’s mouth fell open. “Yorkshire? How did you know?” he spluttered.
“But it’s so obvious,” said Miss Phipps. “You said Mary’s grandparents were north-country English.”
“That’s right. At least her grandmother was. She never knew her grandfather; he died on board ship when they emigrated,” said Tarrant.
“Good heavens!” cried Miss Phipps, more impatiently than before. “You knew that, and yet you talk of a mystery!”
Tarrant gaped. “But what made you think of Yorkshire?” he said. “There are other places in northern England besides Yorkshire. Perhaps it was just a guess?”
“I never guess,” replied the novelist sharply. “You told me yourself. Here is an old man with an Airedale dog carved on his stick and a very fine cloth coat and a name like Kebroyd. Airedale, my dear boy, is in Yorkshire; very fine cloth, my dear boy, is made in Yorkshire; the name Kebroyd, my dear boy—”
“But, Miss Phipps,” interrupted Tarrant. “I was referring to Mary’s people, who came from Yorkshire; I had no idea the Kebroyds did too. They live in London now.”
“Listen,” said Miss Phipps firmly. “The reason why Sir John Kebroyd left his money to Mary is very clear to me. Let us look, not at the problem as you presented it, but at all the data you have accumulated. Here we have a man and his wife, Mary’s grandparents, leaving northern England — shall we say in the 1870s? — and emigrating to New York. Shall we say their name is Fletcher? A very Yorkshire name! You can check that with Mary, but from her own name it seems very probable.”
“It’s quite correct,” said Tarrant, almost tonelessly.
“We don’t know why the Fletchers left England,” said Miss Phipps, “but presently we shall deduce something of the nature of the reason, and you shall find out the rest by routine inquiries. On the voyage Mr. Fletcher dies. His wife gives birth to a daughter, who presently marries in the States a Mr. Arneson (no doubt of Swedish descent), and has in her turn a daughter Mary. Mary grows up, becomes a nurse, visits England, and is seen by a Yorkshireman, John Kebroyd, who hears her name and at once makes her his legatee. John Kebroyd then promptly dies — he does not die the same death as Mary’s Fletcher grandfather, it is true, but he is buried in the same place. The voyage to New York in the 1870s took longer than it does in the Atlantis, my dear boy, and Mr. Fletcher was no doubt buried at sea.”
“He was,” said Tarrant in a stiffled tone.
“So much is fact. Now for deduction,” Miss Phipps went on decisively. “It is clear there must be some connection between John Kebroyd and Mary’s grandfather. Was his name William, by any chance?”
“It was,” said Tarrant.
“Just so — Kebroyd called his son after him, you see,” explained Miss Phipps. “They are both. Yorkshiremen, and as soon as Kebroyd sees Mary he leaves her half his estate, takes steps to insure that she shall receive it soon, and goes off to — shall we say, to join his old friend William Fletcher? Or his cousin, perhaps; yes, I think Kebroyd and Fletcher might easily be cousins. Are we becoming far-fetched if we deduce some quarrel between Kebroyd and Fletcher, some remorse, some wrong? Yes, that is the way I see it: Kebroyd wronged Fletcher in the 1870s, so profoundly that Fletcher left his native land. Sixty years later Kebroyd repaired the wrong.”
“That’s all very well, Miss Phipps,” objected Tarrant, at last finding his tongue. “There’s a great deal in what you say, and I even know further details which support it. But you must remember that it was before Kebroyd heard Mary’s name that he gave her that strange glance.”
“Yes, that’s one of the most interesting features of the case,” remarked Miss Phipps. “Now how shall I explain it to your Do you know your Shakespeare?”
“No,” said Tarrant bluntly.
“There’s a bit in the prologue to Henry V which explains what I mean. “It runs like this:
Do you remember that line?”
“No, I don’t,” said Tarrant. “And what’s more, I don’t understand it.”
“It means this,” said Miss Phipps. “A mere nought, provided it’s put in the right place after a row of figures, can push the number up into the millions. That is to say, an object put in the right place, besides some other particular object, may magnify the significance of both enormously. Do you understand that?”
“Partly,” said Tarrant.
“Look here, my dear boy,” said Miss Phipps, somewhat exasperated. “Suppose you have lost a dish of chops from your pantry, and you see a dog sitting in your backyard, gnawing a juicy bone. Has that dog stolen your chops, or has he not?”
“Not enough evidence to say,” said Tarrant stolidly. “But I should keep an eye on him.”
“Exactly. But now, suppose when you approach the dog you see a broken piece of your own chop dish lying beside the animal. What do you do then?”