‘What interests me particularly,’ I said, thinking back over all that I had just heard, ‘is the two years’ delay. Have you ever come across such a thing before? Is it usual?’
‘Never,’ said Mr Ettrick. He stooped to retrieve Lollie’s sherry glass and returned it to the tray, taking the opportunity while he was there to pour himself a third measure. ‘It’s quite common to have a stipulation that a will has to be executed within a year, or two, or five, if there’s some doubt as to whether the legatee can be traced, for instance. But as to waiting two years, I have no idea.’
On the couch, Lollie shifted a little and moaned softly.
‘I’ll fetch the chauffeur,’ I said. ‘She should be at home.’ Then I shook my head and laughed. ‘Home! She has no home, does she? You are charged to break the household up as soon as you can manage it.’
‘Expedite with all possible haste,’ said Mr Ettrick, nodding. ‘It sounds marvellous, doesn’t it, Miss er… but Mr Balfour had no legal training and, legally speaking, it doesn’t mean a thing. That is, I interpret it as meaning “carry out with as much haste as is commensurate with the comfort and convenience of all affected parties”. Yes, indeed, that’s what it means to me.’
Mr Ettrick, in other words, was that fabled beast: a lawyer with a heart of gold. He was in Pip’s employ and could not resign from it, but he was in Lollie’s corner. He was a small mercy in all of this and I thanked heaven for him.
10
‘And you had no idea, madam?’ said Superintendent Hardy. He was sitting on the dressing stool in Lollie’s bedroom looking like a shire horse in a hat shop against the lavender silk. Lollie had gone straight to bed upon her return and when I had tried to get her up again, tried to persuade her that it was highly improper to summon the policeman to her bedside, she had only laughed a rather hysterical laugh and asked me why she should care about what was proper now. She laughed again as Hardy spoke to her
‘Not “madam”,’ she said. ‘“Miss”! I’m not a married woman. I’m a… I’m a… I don’t even know what the current term is for what I am.’
‘Mrs Balfour,’ said Superintendent Hardy, who must have been squirming but was hiding it very well. ‘My dear madam. Let us pay no attention to any of that until we see what’s what. I for one don’t believe it.’
‘Then why would he have said it?’ said Lollie. ‘Written it? Put it in the most serious document anyone ever writes in his life?’ I was standing beside the window looking out along the street for her doctor, to whom I had sent an urgent message to attend. Lollie, I feared, was beyond the reach of toast water, fish custard, or even port and brandy now, and as pitiful as her tears had been in the first throes of grief, as worrying as her blank, pale face and toneless voice had been when the shock had benumbed her, this was worst of all. Now her eyes glittered and her voice had a rich chuckle in it, and she made me think of a child’s balloon dancing at the end of its string as the breeze tried to twitch it away. I only hoped the doctor would come soon with some kind of stout medicinal tether for her.
‘It seems perfectly in character to me, Lollie dear,’ I said. She and Hardy both turned towards me. ‘He did have a weakness for rather cruel little practical jokes, didn’t he? The goose with mouse stuffing? Perhaps this will was another of them. Perhaps he meant to show it to you. He can’t have expected to die at twenty-six, after all. He probably meant to enjoy your distress then tear it up and write a new one, a real one.’
‘What goose?’ Lollie said, and I found it far from reassuring that out of all I had said, this was the point she chose to question. With relief, I saw out of the corner of my eye a tall man with a large leather bag striding confidently along the road. He took the steps to the front door of Number 31 at a bound and as he disappeared from my view I heard the unmelodious clank of the bell sounding far below.
‘That’s the doctor,’ I said. ‘I’ll go down and meet him.’
But outside the door, Hardy laid an arm on mine and drew me into the boudoir.
‘Let one of the maids go tripping up and downstairs with the doc,’ he said. ‘You’ve more important business to see to. Now, as Mrs Balfour asked you: what goose?’
I told him as briefly and as dispassionately as I could, about the mouse in the goose, the chopped-out pockets in Harry’s clothes, the nasty way Pip Balfour had had of stranding people alone at night in the dark and the cold. ‘I don’t think there’s a single person in the household to whom he wasn’t thoroughly callous at some time,’ I said, counting them off on my fingers. ‘Actually, I don’t know about Stanley, the footman. I haven’t spoken to him. But the men are immaterial. It’s the girls we need to worry about. They were in the house.’
‘But Dr Glenning said a girl couldn’t have done it,’ Hardy reminded me.
‘A typical girl couldn’t have, perhaps,’ I said, thinking of Millie, ‘but that’s not the point. I was already thinking that one of the girls might have let someone in, let him in the back door unheard by Mrs Hepburn and unheard by me, since neither of us were where we should have been. Only I didn’t know which girl and couldn’t imagine who she had let in. I was thinking along the lines of a swain come to avenge her honour, I suppose. But we can cast the role now, Superintendent, wouldn’t you say?’
‘George Pollard?’ said the superintendent. ‘Does he even exist? I thought you didn’t believe in that will. I thought you said it was a joke.’
‘There’s something very odd about it,’ I said. ‘Something I can’t quite put my finger on, but I’m afraid when I dismissed it I was only trying to calm Mrs Balfour. I think it’s real enough. And if Pip Balfour’s cousin knew its terms, then he had the strongest possible motive to persuade someone in this house to open up the back door one night and let him in.’
‘But would he know?’ said Hardy.
‘He might have,’ I answered. ‘There’s something… I’m sure he might have but I don’t know why I’m sure.’
This was just the kind of Easter egg hunt in which Alec and I revelled – chasing down a little wisp of an idea one knew was there – but Superintendent Hardy plucked at his watch cover and kneaded his hat brim as though in some kind of unbearable distress as he waited. Then of course, he tried to argue.
‘I don’t agree,’ he said. ‘There had been a rift in the family. You said yourself Pollard was identified by a former address. The two men might not even have known one another.’
‘That’s it!’ I said. ‘Oh, thank you, Superintendent. That’s what’s been nibbling at me. Pip Balfour knew George Pollard. Definitely.’
‘How do you know?’ said Hardy. ‘What told you?’
‘The will itself,’ I said. ‘Balfour referred to Pollard as “my esteemed cousin” and talked about “affection” and one can’t esteem someone one doesn’t know, much less feel affection for him. Clearly, Lollie knew nothing of him, but Pip certainly did.’
Hardy sat back in his seat, causing some creaking in the delicate silk panels which formed its sides, and gave a nod firm enough to crack a walnut under his chin.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘We can go on that.’ Then he blew out hard. ‘You wouldn’t catch me telling some cousin that I had left him my fortune,’ he said. ‘Asking for… well, a knife in the neck, in this case, don’t you think?’
I nodded, but I was still feeling troubled. I had relieved for a moment the little tickle at the back of my mind which always tells me I am missing something, but it had already returned; clearly, I had not thought my way through to the end of this yet. Alec would have read my face and doubled back to meet me but Hardy was another matter.