Mrs. Colton turned to Inspector Bull.
“I think I’ll go to my room,” she said with an obvious effort to keep her voice steady.
“I should, Mrs. Colton,” remarked the doctor curtly. “I’ll leave you a bromide. I think you need some rest.”
It hadn’t occurred to Bull that Mrs. Colton and the doctor knew each other. He looked at him with more interest now that he did know.
“Are you the Coltons* physician?” Bull asked when Mrs. Colton had gone down.
“I attend Mrs. Colton. My name’s Bellamy. I’ve known her a good many years. Her brother and I were at school together.”
“Did you know Mr. Colton well?”
“I did not,” said Dr. Bellamy flatly. “I understood that he preferred to have Nelson attend the family and that he and Mrs. Colton had several arguments about my coming here.”
“Why?” said Inspector Bull politely.
“The usual thing, I suppose. He was a jealous fellow. That girl comes by her temper naturally.” “Miss Colton?”
“Yes. I don’t think she’s entirely to blame. I think she’s done everything she could to get along with her stepmother. But it’s been difficult. They’re about the same age—Agatha Colton is twenty-five and Mrs. Colton twenty-eight—and they’re both as temperamental as colts.”
“You mean they don’t get along?”
“Just what I’m trying to say. You saw the scene a few minutes ago, or I wouldn’t have mentioned it. In fact, somebody ought to take the girl in hand until this mess about her father is cleared up.”
Inspector Bull gave him a mildly inquisitive look.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “If you don’t know, let it go at that.”
“Mrs. Colton was unhappy with her husband?”
Again the doctor shrugged his heavy shoulders.
“Not more so than most married people I know.”
Bull disliked cynicism, was himself most happily married, and was annoyed.
“You’re not married yourself, then?”
“No. I see too much of other people’s affairs. However, Louise Colton has got on well enough. If Agatha had lived somewhere else I think she and Colton would have managed very nicely. But Agatha was opposed to her father’s marrying again. Her own mother had been dead only a year. I fancy old Colton wasn’t as suave at home as he was to his duchesses over the counter.”
“Was Agatha Colton jealous of her stepmother?”
“Jealous or resentful, one. They tried to hit it off. Agatha wanted to live by herself, take a flat somewhere, but the old fellow was opposed. The two agreed they’d be friendly enough if they didn’t have to live together. Colton was a pious, headstrong old ass. Said they ought to love one another.”
Bull noticed that the doctor spoke quite without bitterness. It seemed reasonable enough.
“Miss Colton looks as if she had a will of her own. Why didn’t she go anyway?”
“No money. Colton never gave her an allowance. She had to ask for every cent she got. As a matter of fact I think she was trying for a post somewhere.”
“Did she dislike her father?”
“No, indeed. They got on. At least before his second marriage. I think things are different now—or were.”
“What did she mean when she said she couldn’t stick it any longer, do you think?”
The doctor shrugged again as he took up his bag.
“Just what she said, I imagine. Unless she’s gone already she’s probably downstairs—why don’t you ask her?”
“Thanks,” said Inspector Bull. “I will.”
He heard voices in the library and tapped on the door.
Agatha Colton opened it. She was dressed for the street, in a short dark fur jacket and small black hat off her forehead. Her face was white and her eyes had a strained bright look in them.
“Come in, Inspector Bull,” she said, her voice tensely calm. “This is Mr. Field, my father’s solicitor.”
Bull saw a slender, middle-aged man with sandy hair.
“Inspector, I’m trying to persuade Miss Colton not to be precipitate here.”
The solicitor smiled at the girl in a half-serious, half-amused perturbation.
“Oh, I’m not being precipitate,” she cried. “I’ve stood it as long as I can. I can’t stand it any longer, I tell you.”
“Now, my dear. Think of your father. Think how it will look!”
Miss Colton’s eyes flashed.
“You make me sick, John Field. What do I care how it looks? Father’s dead and I’m going. Do you hear? Going!”
Mr. Field stepped backwards with a gesture of resignation, and bowed politely.
Inspector Bull said, “I quite understand your feeling, Miss Colton.”
The quiet authority in his voice brought her to instant attention.
“I’m quite sure you don’t,” she said sharply. “How could you? You can’t possibly.”
“Perhaps not, then, Miss Colton. But I do know this. If you leave now you’ll be making it harder for everybody, including yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
Mr. Field glanced up quickly from the papers he had been taking from his despatch case,
“I mean,” said Bull soberly, “that there are several points in connection with Mr. Colton’s death that have to be cleared up, and that haven’t been so far. And that until then we prefer to be in touch with . . . everybody.”
He was watching the girl closely. He saw the gradual dawning of horror in her dark eyes. She turned slowly to the solicitor, who stood by the table, his face blank with amazement.
“Then they did do it!” she cried suddenly, in a hard choked voice. “They did kill him!”
It was Bull’s turn to be horrified.
“Who did?” he said.
She looked at him wide-eyed for a moment.
“Nothing, Inspector. I didn’t mean anything.”
“Who do you think killed your father, Miss Colton?” Suddenly she laughed wildly.
“Who, indeed? Who do you think? Don’t be funny, Inspector. Oh, I’ll stay. Ring the bell please, somebody; tell the girl to unpack my bag.”
She sat down in a big leather chair by the fire and pulled off her hat. She was quite calm again, and stared into the fire, twirling her little hat round and round in her hands. Once she missed it and it fell on the floor. She made no move to pick it up. At last she stood up.
“I’m going upstairs. If you’d like to see Louise, Mr. Field, I’ll tell her you’re here . . . if the doctor’s left yet.”
“Thank you. I can wait if necessary.—A very difficult young woman, Inspector.”
Inspector Bull wiped his forehead with a fine tan handkerchief. “I’m beginning to believe it,” he said.
Mr. John Field was one of those men who while he was at Cambridge was felt a certainty to make a brilliant marriage and some day be Prime Minister. Unfortunately he was lazy. At forty he was still a solicitor with chambers in Gray’s Inn. However, he was a successful solicitor. He overcame his laziness enough to build up a fairly lucrative practice, largely for the reason that of the two evils, work and poverty, poverty was the worse.
George Colton was one of his best clients. His business was not large. It brought in only some few hundred pounds a year. But it took almost no time and practically no energy, and as such it was John Field’s favourite. Further, it was rumoured —and Mr. Colton had been pleased to confirm the rumours—that Mr. Field was interested in Agatha Colton. Mr. Colton was pleased. John Field certainly spent a good deal of time in the house in Cadogan-square, and if Agatha Colton did not seem to return his interest with as much ardour as her father would have liked, George Colton was not the man to let his daughter’s whims stand in the way of her own good.
Bull, of course, was entirely unaware of this. What he saw was an immaculately clad gentleman with slate-blue eyes and sandy hair that was neither as thick as Inspector Bull’s own tawny mane nor as thin as Agatha Colton said it was when she wished to annoy her father.
“Miss Colton says that Smith died a bit ago,” Field said, with very little apparent concern, Bull thought. “That’s awkward. He knew more about Mr. Colton’s actual business than anyone.”
“Yes, it’s too bad,” Bull rejoined briefly. “Doctor said the shock was too much. Was he very much attached to Mr. Colton?”
The solicitor hesitated a moment.
“In a sense,” he said. “I mean he’d been with Colton’s father. I suppose altogether he’d been with the firm half a century, perhaps. Of coure, you know that Mr. Colton was not precisely a ‘loveable’ man. I mean I should doubt very strongly if there was any deep personal attachment there.”
“Well,” said Bull. “Why the shock, in that case?”
Again Mr. Field hesitated.
“Well, of course, Inspector,” he replied, with a deprecatory gesture, “I wonder if it isn’t a mistake to assume that the shock was Mr. Colton’s death. After all, Mr. Colton was killed yesterday. Of course, perhaps it was that. I’ve no way of telling. It’s absurd for me to express an opinion.”
Inspector Bull decided to waive the point.
“You do know, however, what disposition Mr. Colton made of his property. Was he a very wealthy man?”
Mr. Field took a paper from his pocket.
“The will is quite a long document,” he said. “I’ve jotted down the important points of it here for you.”
Bull took the sheet of paper.
“You’ll observe,” Field said, “that he’s left Mrs. Colton his business. He wished it carried on as long as Smith lived. At Smith’s death, he suggests, Mrs. Colton should arrange for its liquidation; however, that’s entirely at her discretion. He leaves his daughter the income from a block of stocks. That’s approximately £ 1,000 a year. Also a cottage in Surrey. Then there are minor bequests. Smith gets—was to get —£ 200 a year for life. Gates £ 100 for life. Then the residue, which amounts to something like £ 150,000 goes to his wife.”
“Then Mrs. Colton is comparatively a very wealthy woman.”
Mr. Field raised his sandy eyebrows.
“No wealthier, Inspector, than she was a couple of days ago, really. Mr. Colton was extremely generous.”
“With his wife—but not his daughter, I understand.”
“That I know nothing about,” Mr. Field said with a smile.