‘So you were just making sympathetic noises to poor Mrs Balfour?’ he was saying now. ‘I can see your reasoning – she’s in a bad way – but it’s going to be harder for her in the end.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ I said. ‘If the whole thing is a joke – if the will’s invalid – then Pip Balfour died intestate and…’
‘Ah,’ said Hardy. ‘Mrs Balfour inherits.’ He gave another final sort of nod.
‘And if the will is good and if Cousin George, with the help of someone in this house, did for Cousin Philip, then he – George, I mean – can’t benefit from his crime, and once again Lollie scoops the lot.’
‘Right,’ said Hardy. ‘That’s all tied up then.’
‘Except for this Josephine person,’ I said. ‘The first wife. The only wife if the dates are right.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Hardy. ‘Her.’ He sounded pained again.
‘Although…’ I said, thinking it all over. ‘I shall have to check, or perhaps you might, but I think, as long as George Pollard is guilty and is cut out of the will because of that, and since Josephine Carson is dead, and so long as she and Pip had no children…’
‘Lord, that’s a thought!’ said Hardy.
‘But there’s nothing to suggest that they did,’ I reminded him. ‘So, Pollard guilty, a childless Josephine long gone, even without a will Lollie inherits. I’m almost sure she does. On account of her irregular marriage. What’s called in England a common-law marriage.’
‘They don’t exist,’ said Hardy. ‘There’s no such thing.’ The definite nature of this point seemed to please him.
‘They don’t,’ I said, ‘but Scottish irregular marriages certainly do. By declaration, by habit and repute or by consummation. I should say Lollie has two out of the three, wouldn’t you?’
Mr Hardy blushed at that but I sailed on.
‘I daresay a judge would look most favourably on Lollie’s claim, especially in a case like this, where if she doesn’t get it there’s no one else it can go to except the Crown.’
‘Good luck to the poor judge who had to pick his way through it,’ Hardy said.
As I passed the telephone in the hallway on the ground floor minutes later, I felt a sudden wild desire to ring up Hugh and tell him that I had just astounded a police superintendent with my superior grasp of Scots Law. I fought it.
Hardy had gone, in faint hope, to look for a George Pollard who might, despite that ‘formerly’, still be lingering in St Mary’s Square, Gloucester, and if not to order a search for Pollards with a Balfour connection and track down marriages of Balfours to Carsons. He was thus playing to his strengths. And I to mine: I was to hand-feed a few carefully selected titbits of news to the others and had also been set the task of a little actual, Holmesian, sleuthing, not quite with a magnifying glass and a tin of fingerprint powder but very much along those lines. I looked forward to it; perhaps after a short interlude of snooping around for clues with my mind engaged on such tangible matters as gates and walls and doors and keys, whatever it was that was troubling me would dislodge itself from the recesses where it was lurking and allow me to… cough it into my hand and see what it was? I really had to find a different way to describe it to myself before I tried it out loud.
At that thought, my shoulders drooped a little, for there was only one individual imaginable to whom I might ever relate it. If I could only have ten minutes with Alec, I thought, then the niggle of the will, the tangle of the servants and their alliances, and the various other cobwebs which had brushed lightly against the edge of my attention for a moment each before falling away again would all be brought to bright light and clarity. Of course, I was romanticising; Alec and I can blunder around together in the twilight, beset by cobwebs, as readily as can I alone, but two heads, as Nanny Palmer always used to say, are better for knocking together than only one.
I was still staring at the telephone when it rang, and when my feet touched the floor again after a short leap into the air I was convinced it would be Alec at the other end, somehow coming to help me.
‘Good afternoon,’ I said, in my most carefully modulated accent. ‘The Balfour residence.’
‘The what?’ said a penetrating voice. ‘Who the dickens is this? And who taught you how to answer a telephone? Balfour residence indeed! Who are you?’
‘Mi-iss Rossiter, madam,’ I said, for whoever this was it was most definitely a madam.
‘Who?’ bellowed the voice. ‘Where’s Faulds? And where’s my niece?’
Illumination spread over me. It was Great Aunt Gertrude.
‘Mrs Hampton-Hayley,’ I said, sure of my recollection, ‘I’m afraid Mrs Balfour is seriously indisposed this afternoon. Would you like to-’
‘Who? What’s going on? This is Mrs Lambert-Leslie speaking.’ I had been close but hardly accurate, then. ‘With great reluctance, I might add, because I detest these damnable machines. Fetch my niece at once.’
‘As I was saying, madam.’ I had an aunt of my own for whom I had perfected the technique I was now employing: that of holding the earpiece a foot from my head to dull the booming and putting my face very close to the mouthpiece to try to break through it. ‘Mrs Balfour has her doctor with her just now and she’s very unwell indeed. If I might take a message, perhaps?’
‘Nonsense,’ said Great Aunt Gertrude, although I was unsure which part of my contribution she was dismissing. ‘This is becoming utterly farcical. I’m ringing to say that I’ve run out of petroleum and I’m only halfway there.’
‘I’m terribly sorry to hear that, madam,’ I said. ‘Mrs Balfour is in great need of succour.’
‘Can’t think why,’ said Aunt Gertrude. ‘My second husband came off and went half a mile with his foot caught in the stirrup, bashed to bloody bits, and I watched the whole thing through my field glasses and didn’t go looking for any succour. What she needs is jollying up and setting straight. But I’m stuck halfway, and not a drop of petrol to be had. I’ll tell you, young woman, I wish I’d brought my gun.’
The words, when she repeated them, went in at last.
‘Halfway?’ I said. ‘Halfway between Inverness and here? Where exactly are you, Mrs Lambert-Leslie?’ She drew away from the mouthpiece and I heard her shouting to someone in the distance. I did not hear the reply, but when she spoke into the telephone again, the sun shone. ‘Ballinluig,’ she roared. ‘God-forsaken spot. I thought Inverness was bad but this is worse, I can tell you.’
‘In that case,’ I said, ‘you are in luck. You are five short miles from some petrol, if you will consent to carry a passenger to town.’
It took rather more explaining than one might have imagined, because Great Aunt Gertrude was one of those individuals who, rather than be told what the teller knows and she does not, fires questions, guesses and objections as rapidly as she can think them up and listens to nothing. Eventually, however, we established to her grudging satisfaction Alec’s name, address, school, regiment, father, mother and – crucially – grandmother’s sister, whom Great Aunt Gertrude had met in the days of her youth and remembered fondly.
Alec Osborne is the other kind, in this as in every respect, and he took less than a minute to cotton on.
‘Gertrude Lambert-Leslie,’ he said. ‘Battleaxe. Arriving in ten minutes. Right-ho. I’ll pack for a week, Dan, because God knows how I shall ever get home again. Now what about the dogs? Shall I bring them?’
‘Don’t tease me,’ I said. ‘How can you? But if she’s there, right there, right now, put her on for a moment, would you?’ There was some scuffling and whistling at the other end and the sound of extravagant sniffing came down the line to me. ‘Bunty?’ I said. She whined. ‘Oh, darling! Hello! Hello, my darling!’