At a quarter-past five Diana, with the help of Mrs. Todd, stowed her garments into Rose Somervell’s huge, scented clothes-cupboard. That dreadful, taffeta-draped bed, those gilded swans! It would feel strange sleeping in it—but what did it matter?
“Humph! What’s this?” Mrs. Todd’s voice floated grimly to her from the bathroom. “Whole strips of her beautiful lino come loose for want of a few tacks. Your old Mrs. What’s-her-name doesn’t seem to’ve kept things as I’d have liked, for all she had the place to herself for so long. My word! The Queen of Sheba couldn’t have done herself no better in the way of curtains—and just for a bath! Ripped at the hem, though. More carelessness!”
The speaker emerged and picked up the big bunch of red roses which had just come up with Uncle Nick’s card attached. Through steel-rimmed spectacles she surveyed them approvingly.
“Well, I must say! Brighten you up a bit, won’t they?” Searching for a suitable vase she continued: “That Mr. Blundell’s what you’d call a real, good-hearted man. I said it last Christmas when he sent us in the dozen of champagne, and I say it now. This is a sad break-up, Miss Di, but if it had to be, well, you couldn’t have tumbled to nothing better, now could you?”
Diana absently assented. She had kept silent about Adrian’s arrest, just as she had done about her engagement. Let Mrs. Todd read the news for herself in the paper she was sure to buy on her way home. She longed to be alone; and then, by sheer perversity, wanted to run after Mrs. Todd and drag her back the instant the door had closed on her comfortable form. Angrily she took herself in hand. This flat wasn’t haunted. If she started letting its empty grandeur get on her nerves, where would she be?
Now was the time to tabulate her ideas. She stood before the crackling log fire in the drawing-room, and by way of preliminary studied the life-like portrait of the late occupant, painted when the latter was at her most vivid and arrogant.
“She was good-looking, anyhow,” she reflected, thrusting aside the slightly uncanny feeling that the blue, heavy-lidded eyes were meeting her own with sardonic scorn. “Even old and stout she had presence—and charm, of a kind. I suppose she was a good actress. They all rave about her, still; but she did have a selfish nature, and what a wicked tongue! It’s quite possible she’d been spreading more stories about old Felix. It’s certain she had her knife into Elsie. Was she scheming to get Elsie out of her job? She could have done it—and Elsie may have known she could.”
Fear of being ousted from a remunerative post might have provided a sufficient motive for murder. The secretary had easy access to a work dealing largely with poisons; she had shown a highly-suggestive anxiety after the death, and as soon as the post-mortem verdict was announced had left her employment. All Diana’s attempts to locate her had failed. At the Bloomsbury boarding-house there was no news of her. Perhaps, though, Uncle Nick knew something. Why not run down now and find out?
Blundell was in, in fact just on the point of coming up to see if she was comfortably installed.
“I’ve been kicking myself for giving you that nasty turn. You must have thought me an addle-pated old ass!”
“I’m the one to apologise, Uncle Nick. I wanted too, to thank you for the roses. I wish, though, you wouldn’t take so much trouble!”
“Trouble? Who have I got to take trouble for if not you?” The three-cornered eyes crinkled with good humour. “I kept her supplied with flowers. If I can’t do the same for you, why, it’s a pity, that’s all. Was there anything you wanted before I buzz off? I’m dining with a client.”
“There were several things—but only if you aren’t in too great a hurry. Could I, do you think, see a copy of Aunt Rose’s will?”
“Oh, Lord, yes—right now. Here you are.”
Unlocking a drawer in the heavy mahogany table which occupied the centre of the library, he spread before her a long, folded document. “As you see,” he said, “it’s quite a simple affair.”
So it appeared, for all its redundant legal jargon. There were but few minor bequests, which included ten pounds to an old stage-door-keeper, a set of turquoises and a seed-pearl brooch for herself, and the big portrait and a Sargent drawing of Rose for Uncle Nick. All that remained when the estate was cleared and death-duties paid went to Adrian Somervell, of New York City; but in none of this was Diana interested. She skimmed rapidly and turned to the signatures. First came Rose’s, smug, firm, self-assured. Next, the witnesses. She stared hard. They were Herman Gaylord, and Elsie K. Dilworth.
“By the way,” she murmured, handing back the paper, “have you the least idea what’s become of Miss Dilworth?”
Blundell looked at her, momentarily arrested. Then his forehead wrinkled with whimsical chagrin.
“I wish I knew,” he said, with a shake of his big head. “All I had from her, after six years of good service, was a typewritten note telling me she’d all of a sudden crocked up. Not a sign of an address. I can’t make it out.”
“And you don’t know where she went when she left her old boarding-house?”
“I didn’t know she had left till I went round to inquire. Regular machine that girl was. She was worth a lot to me. I’d give something to be able to help her, if she’s ill. I even wired her sister, up in Lincolnshire, but she’s not been heard of in that quarter. It’s funny, don’t you think?”
Funny? It was more than that. Decidedly odd. . . . “And you don’t yet know what began this inquiry?”
“The devil I do! I’d give a cool thousand to find out.” As though aware that his explosive irritability required an explanation, he added that it was the underhandedness he resented.
“If any person had doubts, why didn’t he come out openly with ’em? You see the position it put me in. I was hampered, and so was the doctor, by not getting here till she was in a state of coma. That concussion, and then the partial paralysis muddled up the real symptoms. You understand what I’m getting at. If a statement was made it should have come from me.”
He toyed with his keys, suddenly looking old and weary. With a determined change of subject he spoke of the Sargent drawing, mentioned in the will.
“Beautiful bit of work. Got it hanging over my bed. Look at it whenever you’ve a mind. It’s as she was when she first brought me her affairs to handle. She was playing, I remember, the part of Polly, in Sunbeams.”
“Uncle Dick,” said Diana after a pause; “can you tell me exactly what led up to the making of this will?”
She could see he did not want to comply. In the livid light of the reading-lamp the laughter-creases in his cheeks looked as though they had been left high and dry for all time.
“Why not?” He lowered his body into one of the huge leather chairs and crossed his short thick legs. “Of course you would want to know, wouldn’t you? Well, to begin with, she’d often discussed with me how she ought to leave her property. No near relations, didn’t take to the idea of charitable institutions—understand?”
“Then she’d never made a will till now?”
“She said not. I’ve seen nothing amongst her papers to disprove it.” He polished his pince-nez and continued: “She seemed lately to dwell more and more on old times. Particularly on the boy, Adrian, I expect because she knew he was in London. She got to brooding, and asked me if I thought Adrian was keeping away from her because of any hard feeling. She was hurt. Not that she fell on his neck when I first brought him round. Oh, no! Why, she made out to be a wee bit huffed. It soon passed over when he took to coming on his own.”
The blood mounted to Diana’s cheeks.
“But did he? I’m positive he came only when he was invited.”
Blundell glanced at her. “Well, well, maybe I’m wrong,” he said soothingly. “I got the idea, after he dropped in with a bunch of chrysanthemums . . . but there, we’ll not argue the point. Anyhow, it was the very next morning she rang up to say she wanted to hold a business talk. I went along, and she told me straight out I was to draft a will for her to sign. When I heard who was to get the main bulk of her property I was astonished. I suggested taking time to think it over, while I made just a few inquiries. But would she? Not much. Her mind was made up. She’d known Adrian from a boy, she reminded me. That was enough for her.”
“But you did make inquiries?”
“Naturally—and they were quite satisfactory. I got the draft ready myself, to please her. For some reason of her own she was dead against Miss Dilworth knowing anything about her private concerns. I took it up, and she signed it.”
One of Diana’s questions had been answered. Elsie Dilworth had been ignorant of the contents of the will till the author was dead and buried—or at least there was good reason to suppose this.
“How did Aunt Rose seem when she signed?” Blundell betrayed obvious symptoms of discomfort.
“A trifle nervous,” he admitted. “Most ladies are, when it comes to putting their names to legal documents. Gaylord will tell you I joked her a bit, to ease the strain. I’ve since wondered—no,” he corrected hastily; “I’m exaggerating. Hind thoughts don’t count, do they?”
“You’ve wondered if she might have been doing something against her real inclinations?”
“Now, don’t you go putting words into my mouth!”
Blundell sprang up, patting her shoulder with the playful condescension she found so galling. “I didn’t mean anything of the kind. Whew! I must be off. Oh! I’m forgetting. I’m taking you to see Adrian at ten in the morning. That suit you? The sooner we have a talk with him, the easier we’ll both feel.”
When he had gone she got down the Medical Jurisprudence, firmly resolved to master what she had failed to take in that morning; but she was at first too shaken to read. Why had that admission been retracted? If Uncle Nick meant to spare her, he was going a bad way about it. A devil whispered that the impulse prompting that astonishing will had been not generous but self-seeking, like most others emanating from the same source—a good deed done with an unavowed purpose, though what purpose—
Gaylord had come in to mend the fire, and to remind her that dinner would be coming up at seven-thirty.
“Gaylord,” she said casually, “I’ve just learned that you witnessed Mrs. Somervell’s will. How did she strike you at the time? Was she at all nervous?”
From his obvious embarrassment she could see he understood the reason of her question.
“Nervous? Oh, no, miss. I’d never have said that.” He examined the smut on his hands. “Very quiet, I thought her. I think she’d a bit of a cold, and had got sleepy with being by the fire. I can see her now as she was when I went up—lying back comfortable in her chair, yawning, and puffing away at her cigarette.”
The description was wholly unlike the picture her godfather’s words had called up. Perhaps, though, Rose had dissembled her nervousness before the two witnesses.
“Is that all you noticed?”
Gaylord smiled. “Well, not quite, miss. You see, it was like this: Mr. Blundell rang through and said cook and me was to come up. Cook was making pastry, so Miss Dilworth offered to go in her place. Well, then, when the two of us went into the drawing-room upstairs, the old lady—I mean Mrs. Somervell—tossed her head and gave Miss Dilworth ever such a look. You couldn’t have helped noticing it.”
Diana asked if Gaylord had seen previous signs of coolness towards the secretary. A broader grin answered her.
“Plenty of ’em, miss. It seemed as how Mrs. Somervell never missed a chance of ticking her off good and proper. I think this time Mr. Blundell quite expected her to pass some nasty remark, the way he started in cracking jokes.”
“Did either you or Miss Dilworth get any idea of what was in the will?”
“Not me, miss. Miss Dilworth. . . . Well, she did look sort of queer when we came out, but I put it down to her being snubbed, as usual. I remember she snapped out very cross, ‘That woman treats me like a dog with the mange!’ Maybe I oughtn’t to talk like this; but you did ask me, didn’t you?”
“I shan’t give you away, Gaylord. Thank you.”
Dusting his broad hands, he took a step towards the door.
“Was there anything more, miss? Because if not, I’m just going to dodge out for an evening paper.”
“Nothing more, Gaylord. I’m going to read here a bit, and then go up.”
She heard him quit the flat, and then, after turning over what he had said to little purpose, she went back to the article on aconite. Aconitum napellus. . . . It would have wanted very little of the root, grated and mixed with the horseradish on one particular plate, to do the damage. Which of the four did the mixing? For there were certainly four to be considered—Petty, Arenson, Elsie Dilworth and Uncle Nick himself. Petty? Too faithful and too stupid, oh, by far! and yet there was the nephew, George, who was not stupid at all, and with his undoubted influence might have schemed to get possession of the hundred-pound legacy. His sneaking his aunt away and standing guard over her might mean fear lest the childish old woman give something away. It was worth thinking about.
What a demon of a plant! Within a few minutes would begin that tingling sensation Rose had complained of—first in the lips and tongue, next in the stomach. Later would come numbness and nausea. Sometimes the victim would be unable to stand; always he would find extreme difficulty in articulating. A sense of impending paralysis, blindness, even lockjaw were possible. Coma quickly set in, and in from three to seven hours the sufferer would be dead.
Arenson? A queer, cold fish, an unknown quantity, even to his theatrical colleagues. Once, it was said, he had been in love with Rose, who had flouted him; and then there was the three years’ quarrel, recently patched up. Diana would have said Felix was a coward. Still, to kill in this manner called for no great daring or risk. Suppose—
Was Gaylord back already? Some one had come into the flat, using a latch-key. The person seemed to be lingering with but slight movement in the hall. Doing what? The prolonged hesitation struck Diana as odd. She laid down her book, and stole without noise to the half-open door. She glanced out, and drew back.
There, within three yards of her, stock-still and gazing fearfully round, was the departed secretary.