Perhaps he oughtn’t to have risked coming back, seeing how bitterly the old man felt, but, as he’d said, he was absolutely on the rocks and had to get money somehow – and then, how was he to know that the sight of him would have such a fatal effect?
A straightforward story. Grass, the taxi-driver, not only confirmed it, but strengthened it by several items Gerald Park had left unsaid.
For instance, he had kept his taxi waiting beside the door because Gerald had given him the wink… Well, wink was a manner of speaking. Gerald had asked him to wait in a sheepish sort of way, and Grass, knowing how things were between old Stanley and that young blackg- this nephew of his, as all the village did, anticipated a quick return fare with Gerald being booted out.
While Grass waited he watched Gerald. That was easy. Gerald left the front door wide open – for a quick run out, of course, should his uncle turn nasty. As the sitting-room door was just to the left of the hall, Grass naturally saw Gerald open that. Saw him all the time, in fact, for he never really went over the threshold of the sitting-room-never had the chance from the look of it.
Yes, Gerald stopped dead in the doorway. He seemed scared to go in. Grass heard him call out loud something like, “But, Uncle, give me a chance…” After that there was a crash inside the room, and Gerald turned a frightened face over his shoulder, yelling that his uncle had had a fit or something.
Gerald was so paralysed with surprise that Grass had to push him out of the sitting-room doorway to get at the old man. He found Stanley Park in a heap beside his arm-chair-yes, right across the room, by the fire – and, from the look of him, there wasn’t much chance. Oh, he was still alive, but it was plain his heart had burst or something, at the sight of Gerald, and it was all u.p.
No, Gerald hadn’t gone near him. He stood hovering away off by the door like a frightened puppy, until, suddenly, he thought of the brandy and Mrs Ferris. Grass had heard him yelling for Mrs Ferris. She came in ahead of Gerald, who handed her the brandy and glass; he was still that scared and helpless. In fact, the only thing the feller did try to do was to take off his coat and hand it to him to put under his uncle’s head. Even then Mrs Ferris had stopped him and made him fetch a cushion instead.
Mrs Ferris, a rabbit-mouthed, but plump and motherly sort of woman, bore all this out. She had been at the scullery sink washing the breakfast things when she heard Master Gerald call. She had come at once, after drying her hands. Master Gerald was coming from the dining-room with the brandy and glass in his hands as she reached the sitting-room door. He shouted that his uncle had been taken ill, and she ran into the sitting-room. She didn’t like the look of the old gentleman at all, and sent Grass for the doctor.
No, it was she who gave that order; maybe Master Gerald repeated it to Grass, but the poor boy was so terribly upset he did not know what he was doing. Yes, he stood about helpless the other side of the room, so flummoxed at what had happened that he seemed terrified of coming near his uncle. Yes, he did take off his coat for his uncle’s head, which only showed how struck all-of-a-heap the poor boy was, seeing he could have reached for any of three cushions from the settee.
Mrs Ferris’s manner made it plain that she had a warm corner in her heart for Gerald. She agreed that he’d been wild and reckless, and that his uncle had been terribly set against him because of his theft. But she held he’d been led away by his kind heart. Also, though she didn’t want to cast no aspersions, there was those who had worked against him, too. Yes, Miss Barbara Tabard, if they must have it. All she would say was that if Miss Barbara had only let well alone, poor old Mr Stanley would be alive and happy now.
Miss Barbara Tabard was the reason why we were in the case. She was the daughter of Stanley Park’s sister, and she and Gerald were the only living relatives of the dead man. She lived in Stripe, where she taught in an elementary school, for she was an independent, pretty, and vehement girl in the middle twenties.
For these reasons she had an enmity for Gerald, whom she considered a slimy, unscrupulous little sponger who had wormed his way into their uncle’s good graces solely to feather his own nest. She had already told us quite frankly that it was she who had discovered his thefts and so caused the break between him and his uncle.
Barbara had made the twenty minutes’ journey from Stripe immediately on receiving the wire about her uncle’s death. Finding Gerald on the scene, she had become suspicious at once. Also she found Stanley Park’s doctor puzzled. He could not understand how the old man had come to die from heart failure-as it seemed. Only a few months before, he had given Stanley Park a thorough overhaul, and his heart had then been as sound as a bell. Of course, a shock might have made a difference, but he was perplexed.
Barbara had seized on that (“She would,” Grimes had snarled). She at once became sure there had been foul play. She declared that Gerald would stop at nothing when it was a question of money. And there was a question of money. Stanley Park had been a rich man. He had meant the bulk of his fortune to go to Gerald, as his natural heir, with a smaller sum for her, Barbara. But after Gerald’s exposure and disgrace he had decided to make a fresh will, cutting Gerald out entirely and leaving everything to her.
Gerald, Barbara insisted, must have learnt that he was altering his will and so taken a desperate step to prevent his own disinheritance. The doctor and even the local sergeant thought her suspicions too wild in the face of the evidence, but the impetuous girl promptly tackled the indulgent Mrs Ferris and forced from her an admission that, not only had she been in correspondence with Gerald, but that she had told him that his uncle had actually made an appointment with his lawyer for the next week in order do put the alteration of his will finally in hand.
On learning that, Miss Barbara went off the deep end, as the local sergeant put it, telling him that if he did not move she herself would go to headquarters at Stripe and force the police to take action. As she was plainly the sort to keep her word-with interest – the harassed sergeant decided that the best way out would be to let Stripe hold the baby, so to speak; so he had ‘phoned headquarters. That was why Inspector Grimes and Paul Toft had picked me up at my consulting-room on the way to Friars’ Vale. As Medical Officer I might find something that Stanley Park’s doctor had missed. But they hadn’t much hope. As Grimes said when we’d finished with the witnesses.
“Sheer waste of time an’ tissue. On the face of it, this Gerald Park never had a chance o’ doing anything to his uncle, even if he wanted to. There never was a case in it…”
“I don’t know… I feel…” Paul Toft muttered, and at that ominous “Kill,” we swung on him – and gaped. He had not uncoiled his lank limbs, but his left hand was churning away at a soft piece of india-rubber, that unmistakable sign that his queer mind had sensed crime.
“But – but you can’t feel,” Grimes protested. “Everything’s against foul play. There’s no hint of wound or bruise on the body, for instance, an’ there couldn’t be. Gerald never went within fifteen feet of his uncle. An’ that taxi-driver, who was watching him all the time, saw nothing suspicious.”
“Yes, that taxi-odd,” Paul Toft’s great domed forehead frowned. “Less than ten minutes’ walk from the station – yet this youngster, though he’s financially on the rocks, took a taxi… Queer extravagance, eh?”
“No! Just the sort o’ fool thing his sort does,” Grimes was curtly brushing the suggestion away, when I found myself blurting with that strange impulse that is so often helpful to Toft’s curious gift: