Выбрать главу

“I assure you, Inspector.” he said, “that if the point had been brougt to my notice in such a way, I should certainly have remembered it, in the light of subsequent events.”

“The matter never crossed your mind, I suppose,” said Parker, “when the question arose of winding up the estate and proving Miss Whittaker’s claim to it?”

“I can’t say it did. Had there been any question of searching for next-of-kin it might- I don’t say it would- have have occurred to me. But I had a very clear history of the family connections from Mr. Probyn, the death took place nearly two months before the Act came into force, and the formalities all went through more or less automatically. In fact, I never thought about the Act one way or the other in that connection.”

Parker said he was not surprised to hear it, and favoured Mr. Hodgson with Mr. Towkington’s learned opinion on the subject, which interested Mr. Hodgson very much. And that was all he got at Leahampton, except that he fluttered Miss Climpson very much by calling upon her and hearing all about her interview with Vera Findlater. Miss Climpson walked to the station with him, in the hope that they might meet Miss Whittaker- I am sure you would be interested to see her-but they were unlucky. On the whole, thought Parker, it might be just as well. After all, though he would like to see Miss Whittaker, he was not particularly keen on her seeing him, especially in Miss Climpson’s company. “By the way,” he said to Miss Climpson, “you had better explain me in some way to Mrs. Budge, or she may be a bit inquisitive.”

“But I have,” replied Miss Climpson with an engaging giggle, “when Mrs. Budge said there was a Mr. Parker to see me, of course I realised at once that she mustn’t know who you were, so I said, quite quickly, ‘Mr. Parker! Oh, that must be my nephew Adolphus.’ You don’t mind being Adolphus, do you? It’s funny, but that was the only name that came into my mind at the moment. I can’t think why, for I’ve never known an Adolphus.’

“Miss Climpson,” said Parker solemnly, “you are a marvellous woman, and I wouldn’t mind even if you’d called me Marmaduke.”

So here he was, working out his second line of inquiry. If Miss Whittaker did not go to a Leahampton solicitor, to whom would she go? There was Mr. Probyn, of course, but he did not think she would have selected him. She would not have known him at Crofton, of course- she had never actually lived with her great-aunts. She had met him the day he came down to Leahampton to see Miss Dawson. He had not then taken her into his confidence about the object of his visit, but she must have known from what her aunt said that it had to do with the making of a will. In the light of her new knowledge she would guess that Mr. Probyn had then had the Act in his mind, and had not thought fit to trust her with facts. If she asked him now, he would probably reply that Miss Dawson’s affairs were no longer in his hands, and refer her to Mr. Hodgson. And besides, if she asked the question and anything were to happen-Mr. Probyn might remember it. No, she would not have approached Mr. Probyn.

What then?

To the person who has anything to conceal- to the person who wants to lose his identity as one leaf among the leaves of a forest- to the person who asks no more than to pass by and be forgotten, there is one name above others which promises a haven of safety and oblivion. London. Where no one knows his neighbour. Where shops do not know their customers. Where physicians are suddenly called to unknown patientswhom they never see again. Where you may lie dead in your house for months together unmissed and unnoticed until the gas-inspector comes to look at the meter. Where strangers are friendly and friends are casual. London, whose rather untidy and grubby bosom is the repository of so many odd secrets. Discreet, incurious all-enfolding London.

Not that Parker put it that way to himself. He merely thought, “Ten to one she’d try London. They mostly think they’ re safer there.”

Miss Whittaker knew London, of course. She had trained at the Royal Free. That meant she would know Bloomsbury better than any other district. For nobody knew better than Parker how rarely Londoners move out of their own particular little orbit. Unless, of course, she had at some time during her time at the hospital been recommended to a solicitor in another quarter, the chances were that she would have gone to a solicitor in the Bloomsbury or Holborn district.

Unfortunately for Parker, this is a quarter which swarms with solicitors. Gray’s Inn Road, Gray’s Inn itself, Bedford Row, Holborn, Lincoln’s Inn- the brass plates grow all about as thick as blackberries.

Which is why Parker was feeling so hot, tired, and fed-up that June afternoon.

With an impatient grunt he pushed away his eggy plate, paid-at-the-desk-please, and crossed the road towards Bedford Row, which he had marked down as his portion for the afternoon.

He started at the first solicitor’s he came to, which happened to be the office of one J. F. Trigg. He was lucky. The youth in the outer office informed him that Mr. Trigg had just returned from lunch, was disengaged, and would see him. Would he walk in?

Mr. Trigg was a pleasant, fresh-faced man in his early forties. He begged Mr. Parker to be seated and asked what he could do for him.

For the thirty-seventh time, Parker started on the opening gambit which he had devised to suit his purpose.

“I am only temporarily in London, Mr. Trigg, and finding I needed legal advice. I was recommended to you by a man in a restaurant. He did give me his name but it has escaped me, and anyway, it’s of no great importance, is it? The point is this. My wife and I have come up to see her great-aunt, who is in a very bad way. In fact, she isn’t expected to live.

“Well, now, the old lady has been very fond of my wife, don’t you see? and it has always been an understood thing that Mrs. Parker was to come into her money when she died. It’s quite a tidy bit, and we have been- I won’t say looking forward to it, but in a kind of mild way counting on it as something for us to retire upon later on. You understand. There aren’t any other relations at all, so though the old lady has often talked about making a will, we didn’t worry much, one way or the other, because we took it for granted my wife would come in for anything there was. But we were talking to a friend yesterday, and he took us rather aback by saying that there was a new law or something, and that if my a wife’s great-aunt hadn’t made a will we shouldn’t get anything at all. I think he said it would all go to the Crown. I didn’t think that could be right and told him so, but my wife is a bit nervous- there are the children to be considered, you see- and she urged me to get legal advice, because her great-aunt may go off at any minute and we don’t know whether there is a will or not. Now, how does a great-niece stand under the new arrangements?

“The point has not been made very clear,” said Mr. Trigg, “but my advice to you is to find out whether a will has been made, and if not, to get one made without delay if the testatrix is capable of making one. Otherwise I think there is a very real danger of your wife’s losing her inheritance.”

“You seem quite familiar with the question,” said Parker, with a smile; “I suppose you are always being asked it since this new Act came in?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘always.’ It is comparatively rare for a great-niece to be left as sole next-of-kin.”

“Is it? Well, yes, I should think it must be. Do you remember being asked that question in the summer of 1925, Mr. Trigg?”

A most curious expression came over the solicitor’s face- it looked almost like alarm.