“A woman who regularly visits whoever’s on Condemned Row came to me yesterday to see if I wanted any last favors granted. When I finished, she told me she knew who’d been seeing Sarah Bedford. This man had a decoration on the wall in his home consisting of a bow with two arrows crossed beneath it. One of the arrows is gone, and the other is now mounted horizontally under the bow.
“On the night of the murder, the woman’s husband came in late. The next morning, she found his shirt in the laundry with bloodstains on the right cuff. Since he had another identical shirt, she hid the stained one. It’s available.
“She also offered a guess as to why he killed Sarah.”
“Why was that?”
“She feels that Sarah wanted him to marry her, but he refused.”
“And that’s it?”
“Not quite. She wanted to include her kids in the deal. He might have taken her, but not the kids. When she kept after him, he decided to end the whole thing.”
“Why should this woman tell you?”
“She never said, but she knew what I’m like. She must have guessed what I’d do.”
“Who is this person?”
“The warden’s wife.”
As the uproar commenced, Stonehill raced for the door.
The guards stared at Gates and the warden, whose hands were now cuffed behind him. One of them pointed to Johnson.
“What about him?”
“I’ll stay where I am for a while,” the convict said. “This isn’t as uncomfortable as I thought it was when I sat down.”
When I’m Dead and Gone
by Martin Edwards
© 1994 by Martin Edwards
Martin Edwards resides in Cheshire, England, hut the venue of his Harry Devlin stories is Liverpool and its environs, where his solicitor sleuth occasionally comes up against some mean streets and unsavory opponents. Not so in his latest tale, in which Devlin and his associate visit what seems to be a genteel retirement home...
“I hate to think that he might die on such a beautiful day,” said Sylvia Reid.
Sun was streaming through the office window, but dismay clouded her pleasant features. She had been qualified as a solicitor for exactly one month, not long enough to learn to take each client’s misfortunes in her stride before moving on to the next buff folder and the next troubling tale.
Death, Harry Devlin wanted to tell her, hurt as much in the depth of the darkest night as at the height of an Indian summer. Too often in the past he had come face-to-face with death — the death of those he had loved as well as of those he had good cause to loathe — and he knew that whether sudden or slow, its constant companions were anger, pain, and despair.
But there was work to be done and all he said was: “I hate to think that he might die before we’ve managed to write out his will.”
She frowned. “No need to worry. Lucy has already typed up the engrossment. Would you like to look it over?”
Harry loosened his tie while he thought about it. Making the most of the good weather, his partner Jim Crusoe had taken his wife and children off to Blackpool, leaving Sylvia in charge of the firm’s non-contentious department for the first time since her admission. In truth, she had understood more about the law of property, wills, and probate three months into her traineeship than Harry ever would, but he could not escape the uncomfortable feeling that she still expected him to offer words of wisdom about the legal small print, as well as about how to cope with clients who were despondent, defeated, or about to die.
“If you don’t mind,” he said awkwardly.
Sylvia handed him the crisp foolscap sheets and studied his face for a reaction. She was a serious girl and so anxious to do well in her career that Harry marvelled at her decision to stay on with them rather than moving to a rival firm which could offer more training, prestige, and money than Crusoe and Devlin ever could.
He scanned the will paragraph by paragraph. Leonard Justinian (for Heaven’s sake!) Routley had not indulged in complex testamentary dispositions, but Harry did not want her to think he was simply going through the motions of glancing at her work. And in any event, since Routley was apparently a solicitor, he would expect the will to be word perfect.
“Pass me Ibbotson, please.”
She slid the massive bulk of Ibbotson on Inheritance in front of him. It was the nineteenth edition of a monograph which had first appeared when Victoria was in nappies; within the profession, it was better known as Everything Your Clients Always Wanted to Know About Wills, But Couldn’t Afford to Ask.
Words of warning were uttered on every page. The draftsman of a will is enjoined to manifest the highest standards of professional care... he must regard the desires of the testator as paramount... although before death a misapprehension will be susceptible to correction, thereafter, even where all the beneficiaries are sui juris, ambiguous provisions may need to be the subject of a ruling from the court. The orotund phrasing did not conceal the menace of the message. Harry knew that to err might be human, but it would also expose the firm to a negligence writ. In Jim’s absence, they couldn’t run the slightest risk of making a mistake.
“I was surprised that Mr. Routley hadn’t already made a will,” Sylvia said as he leafed through the precedents with what he hoped was a knowledgeable air. “After all, solicitors know better than anyone else about the problems that can arise on an intestacy. It seems slapdash.”
Harry couldn’t help blushing. “Tell you the truth, I haven’t made one myself.”
She goggled at him. “Why ever not? Superstition?”
“Simply never got round to it.”
He might have added, but didn’t, that he had no one close enough to leave all his things to. Besides, who would thank him for a roomful of dog-eared murder mystery paperbacks and scratched sixties LPs which had never been translated to compact disc? And who exactly would mourn him, a man without a wife or family, when he was dead and gone?
Wanting to change the subject, he reached back in his memory for a scrap of legal trivia. “Anyway, lawyers writing their own wills are notoriously inept. Wasn’t it Sergeant Maynard who decided to benefit the profession with a will that raised most of the problems of inheritance law that had perplexed him during his lifetime?” Sylvia laughed. “At least Mr. Routley’s instructions were easy to follow. He wrote them out for the matron at the old people’s home to read to me over the phone.”
“Why the urgency? What’s the matter with him?”
“Heart trouble, the matron said, complicated by diabetes. Apparently he had a bad do last night. The doctor examined him this morning and says he could go at any time. With the late summer holiday coming up, it’s a long weekend, and the poor old man started to get worried that he might not have a chance to put his affairs in order by the time Tuesday came around.”
Harry glanced at a passage in the textbook cautioning of the dangers associated with intellectual incapacity. He had a nightmarish vision of sitting for hour after hour at Routley’s bedside, trying to take advantage of a fleeting lucid interval. “You’re sure he’s still compos mentis?”
“I did press her about that, especially as we have never acted for him in the past. But she said the doctor was quite definite. And when I go over there later this afternoon to have Mr. Routley sign the will, I’ll talk it through with him, to make sure I’m happy that he knows what he’s doing. In the meantime, his wishes seem clear enough.”