The solicitor frowned, and Wimsey apologised.
“I know, I know – I’ve been fearfully impudent. It’s a failing of mine. And anyhow, it’ll all be in the papers when the old lady does pop off, so I don’t know why I should be so anxious to pump you. Wash it out – I’m sorry.”
“There’s no real reason why you shouldn’t know,” said Mr. Urquhart, slowly, “though one’s professional instinct is to avoid disclosing one’s clients’ affairs. As a matter of fact, I am the legatee myself.”
“Oh?” said Wimsey, in a disappointed voice. “But in that case – that rather weakens the story, doesn’t it? I mean to say, your cousin might very well have felt, in that case, that he could look to you for – that is – of course I don’t know what your ideas might have been -”
Mr. Urquhart shook his head.
“I see what you are driving at, and it is a very natural thought. But actually, such a disposal of the money would have been directly contrary to the expressed wish of the testatrix. Even if I could legally have made it over, I should have been morally bound not to do so, and I had to make that clear to Philip. I might, of course, have assisted him with casual gifts of money from time to time, but, to tell the truth, I should hardly have cared to do so. In my opinion, the only hope of salvation for Philip would have been to make his way by his own work. He was a little inclined – though I don’t like speaking ill of the dead – to – to rely too much on other people.”
“Ah, quite. No doubt that was Mrs. Wrayburn’s idea also?”
“Not exactly. No. It went rather deeper than that. She considered that she had been badly treated by her family. In short, well, as we have gone so far, I don’t mind giving you her ipsissima verba.”
He rang a bell on his desk.
“I haven’t got the will itself here, but I have the draft. Oh, Miss Murchison, would you kindly bring me in the deedbox labelled ‘Wrayburn’? Mr. Pond will show it to you. It isn’t heavy.”
The lady from the “Cattery” departed silently in quest of the box.
“This is all rather irregular, Lord Peter,” went on Mr. Urquhart, “but there are times when too much discretion is as bad as too little, and I should like you to see exactly why I was forced to take up this rather uncompromising attitude towards my cousin. Ah, thank you, Miss Murchison.”
He opened the deed-box with a key attached to a bunch which he took from his trousers’ pocket, and turned over a quantity of papers. Wimsey watched him with the expression of a rather foolish terrier who expects a titbit.
“Dear, dear,” ejaculated the solicitor, “it doesn’t seem to be – oh! of course, how forgetful of me. I’m so sorry, it’s in my safe at home. I got it out for reference last June, when the previous alarm occurred about Mrs. Wrayburn’s illness, and in the confusion which followed on my cousin’s death I quite forgot to bring it back. However, the gist of it was -”
“Never mind,” said Wimsey, “there’s no hurry. If I called at your house tomorrow, perhaps I could see it then.”
“By all means, if you think it important. I do apologise for my carelessness. In the meantime, is there anything else I can tell you about the matter?”
Wimsey asked a few questions, covering the ground already traversed by Bunter in his investigations, and took his departure. Miss Murchison was again at work in the outer office. She did not look up as he passed.
“Curious,” mused Wimsey, as he pattered along Bedford Row, “everybody is so remarkably helpful about this case. They cheerfully answer questions which one has no right to ask and burst into explanations in the most unnecessary manner. None of them seem to have anything to conceal. It’s quite astonishing. Perhaps the fellow really did commit suicide. I hope he did. I wish I could question him. I’d put him through it, blast him. I’ve got about fifteen different analyses of his character already – all different… It’s very ungentlemanly to commit suicide without leaving a note to say you’ve done it – gets people into trouble. When I blow my brains out -”
He stopped.
“I hope I shan’t want to,” he said. “I hope I shan’t need to want to. Mother wouldn’t like it, and it’s messy. But I’m beginning to dislike this job of getting people hanged. It’s damnable for their friends… I won’t think about hanging. It’s unnerving.”
CHAPTER XI
Wimsey presented himself at Mr. Urquhart’s house at 9 o’clock the next morning, and found that gentleman at breakfast.
“I thought I might catch you before you went down to the office,” said his lordship, apologetically. “Thanks awfully, I’ve had my morning nosebag. No, really, thanks – I never drink before eleven. Bad for the inside.”
“Well I’ve found the draft for you, said Mr. Urquhart pleasantly. “You can cast your eye on it while I drink my coffee, if you’ll excuse my going on. It exposes the family skeleton a little, but it’s all Ancient history now.”
He fetched a sheet of typescript from a side-table and handed it to Wimsey, who noticed, mechanically, that it had been typed on a Woodstock machine, with a chipped lower case p, and an A slightly out of alignment.
“I’d better make quite clear the family connection of the Boyeses and the Urquharts,” he went on, returning to the breakfast-table, “so that you will understand the will. The common ancestor is old John Hubbard, a highly respectable banker at the beginning of the last century. He lived in Nottingham, and the bank, as usual in those days, was a private, family concern. He had three daughters, Jane, Mary and Rosanna. He educated them well, and they ought to have been heiresses in a mild way, but the old boy made the usual mistakes, speculated unwisely, allowed his clients too much rope – the old story. The bank broke, and the daughters were left penniless. The eldest, Jane, married a man called Henry Brown. He was a schoolmaster and very poor and quite repellently moral. They had one daughter, Julia, who eventually married a curate, the Rev. Arthur Boyes, and was the mother of Philip Boyes. The second daughter, Mary, did rather better financially, though socially she married beneath her. She accepted the hand of one Josiah Urquhart, who was engaged in the lace-trade. This was a blow to the old people, but Josiah came originally of a fairly decent family, and was a most worthy person, so they made the best of it. Mary had a son, Charles Urquhart, who contrived to break away from the degrading associations of trade. He entered a solicitor’s office, did well, and finally became a partner in the firm. He was my father, and I am his successor in the legal business.
“The third daughter, Rosanna, was made of different stuff. She was very beautiful, a remarkably fine singer, a graceful dancer and altogether a particularly attractive and spoilt young person. To the horror of her parents she ran away and went on the stage. They erased her name from the family Bible. She determined to justify their worst suspicions. She became the spoilt darling of fashionable London. Under her stage name of Cremorna Garden, she went from one disreputable triumph to another. And, mind you, she had brains – nothing of the Nell Gwyn business about her. She was the take-it-and-keep-it sort. She took everything – money, jewels, appartements meublés, horses, carriages, all the rest of it, and turned it into good consolidated funds. She was never prodigal of anything except her person, which she considered to be a sufficient return for all favours, and I daresay it was. I never saw her till she was an old woman, but before she had the stroke which destroyed her brain and body, she still kept the remains of remarkable beauty. She was a shrewd old woman in her way, and grasping. She had those tight little hands, plump and narrow, that give nothing away – except for cash down. You know the sort.
“Well, the long and the short of it was that the eldest sister, Jane – the one who married the schoolmaster – would have nothing to do with the family black sheep. She and her husband wrapped themselves up in their virtue and shuddered when they saw the disgraceful name of Cremorna Garden billed outside the Olympic or the Adelphi. They returned her letters unopened and forbade her the house, and the climax was reached when Henry Brown tried to have her turned out of the Church on the occasion of his wife’s funeral.