The watery eyes were bright with excitement as he moved closer to the door. “What a marvellous idea!”
He had almost made it. “Shall we say nine tonight — in the sun lounge?”
“Splendid!”
“Until then, let us say nothing!” He placed his finger to his lips and felt like crying with relief when she nodded and waved a delicate farewell as he peered outside and, seeing the coast was clear, made good his escape.
The corridor led him straight back to the main hall. No one was about. He took the stairs two at a time and within seconds he was standing outside Leonard Routley’s door. He listened for a moment, then put his head round and looked inside.
The room was deserted.
He saw that the bed had been remade. There were now half a dozen photographs crammed on top of the bedside table, including the degree picture that Harry had seen on his previous visit. The rest showed a man at different points in his life. There were two studio portraits, one that seemed to have been taken at Ascot, and another where he was shaking hands with a youthful-looking Duke of Edinburgh. The rest were less blurred than the degree photo.
He heard movement and voices outside. No question, they were coming closer. For the second time in five minutes he found himself looking round desperately for a hiding place. Once again he was out of luck.
You would never have made it as an Anthony Hope hero, after all, he muttered to himself.
He had no choice but to brazen it out. Standing by the bed, his arms folded, he watched and waited as the door swung slowly open.
Ada Katsikas was wheeling a frail old man in a chair. For all his pallor, Harry recognised him at once as the man in the photographs. Quite different from the tall chap who had his hand on the matron’s shoulder and who, when his now florid cheeks had been coated in white makeup an hour earlier, had been introduced as Leonard Routley.
The matron and her companion came to a sudden halt, their faces drenched in horror at the sight of Harry. Only the old man in the chair, his head lolling to one side, was unmoved.
“Next time you impersonate a lawyer,” said Harry to the man who was not Leonard Routley, “you ought to mug up more on the jargon we use. As we say in our profession, res ipsa loquitur, Mr. Walter Parbold.”
“Do you think they actually had murder in mind?” asked Sylvia the following Tuesday. They were sitting in Jim Crusoe’s office, with the rain drumming against the windowpanes. The weather had broken in the early hours of Saturday morning and storms had raged the whole weekend long in the best traditions of the British bank holiday.
“Not at all. Both father and daughter were thieves, not killers. Parbold has seen the inside of Walton Jail and Strange ways over the years. Dud cheques, selling dodgy cars, that sort of thing. His daughter doesn’t have a record, but the police found she left one or two of the homes where she’d worked as a nurse with scant ceremony after patients’ money and belongings started to go missing. Presumably Ada’s purchase of the Mersey Haven was funded by their ill-gotten gains.”
“But they couldn’t afford the upkeep?” asked Jim.
“Which was why they had to keep their eyes out for a likely mark. Leonard Routley fitted the bill perfectly, because he had plenty of cash, but no relatives who might turn up and start asking awkward questions once he left his estate to a chap he hardly knew.”
“What made you suspect?” asked Sylvia.
“I imagine that his father was a lawyer, too, as his middle name was that of a great Roman jurist.”
“Justinian? I’ve never heard of him.”
“A sign of the educational times. But I would have expected old Routley to know something about the author of The Institutes. And then he seemed to confuse hotchpot with a hotchpotch.”
“I wouldn’t even have thought you knew anything about hotchpot,” Jim grunted.
“I’m fine on footnote knowledge, but don’t press me for a definition.”
His partner reached for Ibbotson and turned to the glossary. “Hotchpot; a throwing-in to a common lot of property for strict equality of division which requires that advancements to a child be made up to the estate by way of contribution or accounting.”
“Ah yes,” said Harry, “it was on the tip of my tongue.”
“I see that once you realised you were dealing with a fake, you could guess the rest,” said Sylvia. “Ada had cleared out her staff for the afternoon, having arranged for a respectable doctor to confirm that the real Routley was of sound mind...”
“He died yesterday, poor old chap. In Ada’s room, the police found the will he actually made twenty-five years ago. He had no one he cared much about, so he left everything to a worthy charity. The Distressed Solicitors Association.”
“I keep thinking they ought to make me a grant,” said Jim.
“... but why,” Sylvia continued firmly, “were you so sure that illness hadn’t simply caused Routley to forget things that he should have known?”
Harry rubbed his chin. “I’ve had more than my share of dealing with death. It has an awful atmosphere all of its own. Horrible, yet unmistakable. But when we walked into that bedroom, my guts didn’t churn. I felt fine.”
Outside they heard another rumble of thunder and Harry couldn’t help thinking again about the real Leonard Routley and wondering, now that the sad old man was dead, where his soul had gone.
Cruel Choices
by E. L. Wyrick
© 1994 by E. L. Wyrick
Like one of the characters in his story, Georgian E. L. Wyrick makes his living as a school counselor. This first published fiction will be followed up later this year by Mr. Wyrick’s first novel, A Strange and Bitter Crop (St. Martin’s Press)...
Kevin Spurlock unsnapped the button under the belt on his plaid polyester pants and blew air through puffed cheeks. “Gettin’ too darned fat.”
Lucas Anderson ignored Spurlock’s self-evident revelation and leaned against the century-old water oak. He stroked his beaked nose slowly as he stared at the body that hung over the rotting porch railing of the dilapidated shack. Flashing blue and red lights from the police cars and the ambulance cut through the swirling October mist that fell from the black sky, creating a hue that washed out the color of the blood dripping from the victim. Lucas was grateful for that.
Spurlock scratched his navel. “Ninth murder just like this one in two years. It’s got to be the Dixie Mafia. I guarantee it.”
Lucas slid down the oak until his bony knees nearly reached his chin. “I’m telling you, Kevin, never, ever, say the words ‘Dixie Mafia’ to me again. I’ve told you a million times, it doesn’t exist.”
Spurlock hitched up his pants and said, “You got any better ideas?”
Lucas shook his head.
“Well, then, how about B. R. Matthews?”
Lucas ran his hands through his prematurely thinning hair. “The problem is, why?”
“Why? Who knows?” Spurlock pointed to the dead man. “Maybe these guys welshed or something.”
“They’re not all guys.” Two of the nine victims had been women.
Spurlock disregarded the correction. “You know as well as I do that B. R.’s into it all — gambling, auto theft, ’shine, drugs.” Spurlock snapped his pants together again. “Even if we can’t prove it, you know it’s true.”