‘Oh, I did not suppose that he came here intending to murder Sir Herbert.’
‘What provocation could he have received sufficient to carry him to such an extreme?’
Frank raised an eyebrow.
‘Does that temper of his require any extreme provocation?’
Miss Silver said in her most thoughtful voice,
‘In small things, no. There is a great deal of surface disturbance, as we saw. He blustered and raged, but at a moment’s notice control was resumed-if indeed it had ever really been lost. To use his own argument, if he has never assaulted anyone before, why should he now murder Sir Herbert Whitall?’
‘In other words, you don’t think he did it.’
‘I can see no reason why he should have done so.’
As she spoke, the telephone bell rang. Frank went over to it, picked up the receiver, and said, ‘Hullo?’ Then his voice changed.
‘That you, Jackson? Well, what have you got?’
There was a pause whilst a murmuring noise came from the instrument. After an interval Frank said,
‘Forty thousand?’ And after another, ‘Isn’t that the old boy who had his picture in the papers with a hundred and one candles round a three-tiered cake?… I see… All right. Thanks.’
He hung up and came back to his chair.
‘Well, there seem to be some signs of a rat down the hole you were interested in.’
‘My dear Frank!’
‘The Dryden hole. I put a ferret down, and he’s just come up to report.’
Her glance held an indulgent reproof.
‘I imagine you to mean that you have had some inquiries made with regard to Sir John Dryden’s will.’
‘Right, as always! The excellent Jackson has been to Somerset House, and reports that Sir John left forty thousand in Government stock in trust to his adopted daughter Lila.’
‘And the trustees?’
‘Two of them-his wife Sybil Dryden, and Sir Gregory Digges.’
This name, together with Frank Abbott’s part in the telephone conversation, brought instant illumination to Miss Silver’s mind. She took two newspapers, one world-famous for its moderate views and impeccable taste, the other of a livelier cast and given to pictorial illustration. Like Frank, she immediately recalled the photograph of Sir Gregory Digges on his hundred-and-first birthday surrounded by descendants, all apparently in rapt contemplation of an enormous cake with candles on every tier.
Frank laughed.
‘I see the name touches a chord. Well, there you are. The will was made getting on for twenty years ago, and I suppose Sir John wanted to pay the old boy a compliment. You know how it is with trustees-one of them does the work, and the others sign on the dotted line, Sir John obviously expected his wife to be the one who did the work. I begin to wonder how she did it.’
Miss Silver was knitting again. She said in a reminiscent voice,
‘Nineteen years ago…Miss Lila was then about three, and Sir John was not married to Lady Dryden.’
‘Sure about that?’
‘Oh, quite. I fear I cannot give you the date of the marriage, but it was some years subsequent to the adoption.’
‘Then her name must have been added later. It would be quite a natural thing to do. Jackson didn’t go into details.’ Miss Silver coughed.
‘Lady Dryden certainly gave me to understand that Sir John had been able to do very little for his adopted daughter.’
‘Query-are her ideas so large that she regards forty thousand as chicken-feed? Or what? I wonder whether the late Herbert had had a look at Sir John Dryden’s will same as Jackson. If he was marrying the lovely Lila he would take an intelligent interest in that forty thousand. But Lady Dryden says there was very little for Lila. How come? Herbert may have wanted to know that and a good deal more. He may have developed an inconvenient curiosity-even a menacing one. If the forty thousand was no longer there, it might be very awkward indeed for Lady Dryden. It would, in fact, explain why Lila mustn’t marry Bill, and must marry Herbert though she quite obviously regarded him as poison.’ He glanced at his wrist-watch and got up. ‘Well, having given free rein to our imaginations and hung a great deal of fancy on a very small peg of fact, we had better come back to solid earth. From which mixed metaphors you may pick out any one you like and keep it with the assurances of my most profound esteem-an expression translated from the French. I’m going to try it on the Chief one day and watch him blow up. For the moment, if his train wasn’t late Mr. Garside, Whitall’s solicitor, should be turning in at the drive. We are about to stage the great will scene and watch everyone’s reactions. You are specially invited to attend.’
Miss Silver gathered up her pink ball, her knitting-bag, and little Josephine’s vest. She smiled and said sedately,
‘Thank you. It will be a most interesting experience.’
CHAPTER XXX
Mr. Garside was a thin, hatchet-faced man with a stoop and a deep lugubrious voice. He was very much shocked at his client’s violent end, and at being, as it were, precipitated into the middle of a murder case. Such a thing had never happened to the firm before. Not in the three generations during which his family had been connected with it. Disapproval enveloped him like a mantle. He sat at the writing-table in the study, opened the small attaché case which he had brought with him, took out some papers, and looked down the room at the assembled company. To his right was Inspector Abbott of Scotland Yard with the local Inspector who had met him at the station. He considered that Inspector Abbott looked a good deal too young for the job, and that he would in all probability be inclined to give himself airs. He disliked him, he disliked his errand. The whole affair was, in fact, extremely distasteful. He directed his attention to the family.
Mr. Haile-he knew a good deal about Mr. Eric Haile. Sir Herbert had been quite outspoken about him on more than one occasion. Lady Dryden-handsome woman, looked very well in her black. The secretary, Miss Whitaker-there wasn’t much he didn’t know about her-looked shockingly ill. Miss Dryden now, who had lost her bridegroom only a few days before the wedding, she didn’t look half so bad. Delicate of course and nervous, but that was only natural. A lovely creature. Ah well, there was many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip. She sat on the sofa in a plain black dress high to the neck and long to the wrist, Mr. Adrian Grey on one side of her and a little woman who looked like a governess on the other. He had heard her name, but for the moment it eluded him. Silver-yes, that was it-Miss Silver. Just what she was doing here, he could not imagine, and no one had taken the trouble to inform him. She had a flowered knitting-bag on her lap. He trusted she was not going to knit. Had he but known it, her sense of decorum, quite as great as his own, would have been equally affronted by the production of little Josephine’s pink vest.
Inspector Abbott had also been contemplating the group about the hearth-Mr. Haile leaning against the mantelpiece, a suitable shade of gravity upon his handsome features-Lady Dryden in one of the big chairs-Miss Whitaker, as became her position, in a smaller one. Well, there they were-all the suspects, except Bill Waring and the Professor. He turned to the solicitor with a nod, and Mr. Garside picked up one of the papers he had taken from his case, cleared his throat, and addressed an expectant audience.
‘I have been asked to make a communication to you on the subject of the late Sir Herbert Whitall’s will. Since the two executors are present, Mr. Haile and myself, I will now proceed to do so. I do not know whether Mr. Haile is acquainted with the terms of the will-’
As he paused upon this, Eric Haile said,
‘My cousin told me that he was putting me in as an executor, but that was some years ago. Beyond that I know nothing. He was not a very communicative person. I supposed that as he was going to be married he would be making a new will. May I ask whether you are now talking of the old will or of a new one?’