Dance to Your Daddy

'Well,' Kirkby went on, 'tomorrow, if you'll be good enough, we'd be glad if you'd accompany us to court. We've got a man coming before the justices accused of murdering Mr Willoughby Lestrange who, we understand, was your brother. This man represents himself to be your uncle, Mr Romilly Lestrange, but Dame Beatrice has reason to believe that he is nothing of the sort, but is a fortune-hunting imposter.'

'Then what do you require of me?' asked Hubert.

'Why, to tell us whether Dame Beatrice is right,' replied Kirkby, with an air of surprise. That is all, sir. There is no need for anything more.'

The clergyman shook his head.

'I am afraid you have had your trouble and expense, and I my journey, for nothing,' he said. 'To the best of my knowledge, I have never seen my uncle. He went out to Kenya before I was born.'

'Family photographs,' suggested Kirkby, hopefully. Hubert shook his head again.

'I have none. I was never shown any. You yourself, Dectective-Inspector, could pass yourself off as my uncle without my being able to contradict you. I am very sorry, but there it is. I can be of no help to you at all.'

'No help to us, sir, but possibly a very great help, then, to the man we are holding in custody,' said Kirkby, disguising his disappointment. 'Just one more question. To the best of your knowledge, would your late brother be similarly placed to yourself? By that, I mean, would he also have been unable to tell us whether our man is Romilly Lestrange or someone impersonating him?'

'I cannot answer for my brother. We have seen little of one another since he became my grandfather's secretary and I entered the Church. On the other hand, I imagine that his circumstances would be similar to my own. Willoughby was younger than myself by two years. Unless he saw my uncle very recently, he would not have been in a position to recognise him. Moreover, even if Willoughby had met him (assuming that Romilly had returned to England), he would have had to take his word for it that he was our Uncle Romilly. He could not possibly have been in a position to say whether Romilly was what he claimed to be, unless he had my grandfather's word for it.'

'I do not think he had that,' said Dame Beatrice.

'That settles it, then,' said Kirkby. 'We shall have to tell the beaks we have no case. The only motive this charlatan could have for getting rid of Mr Willoughby was that the poor gentleman might have given the game away. Take away that motive, and the ground disappears from under our feet. At least, that's the way I see it.'

'The motive would still hold if Romilly thought that Willoughby could unmask him,' Dame Beatrice pointed out.

'Yes, ma'am, I agree, but how are we going to prove that he did think it? If he was (as seems pretty certain) the real Mr Romilly's partner in the coffee plantation out in Kenya, he'd know there weren't photographs sent home, I take it, and he'd know that the nephews hadn't been born when Romilly emigrated. No doubt their father sent the news, and he may have sent photographs of them when they were children, but, as the Reverend Mr Lestrange has just told us, there was no reciprocation. Anyway, it seems to me now that there was no chance whatever that Mr Willoughby could have known that his so-called uncle was an imposter. What do you say to that, ma'am?'

'Several things,' replied Dame Beatrice, 'but perhaps the time is not ripe to say them. I will go so far as to point out, however, that, although it seems more than likely that this Romilly was the real Romilly's partner out in Kenya, even that is not an established fact. Secondly, if this Romilly supposed (mistakenly, as it turns out) that Willoughby could expose him, why did he not suppose that some one or other, or possibly all, of the other young relatives would be in a similar powerful position?'

'Yes, I had thought of that, ma'am, of course, and, so far, we don't know the answer.'

'Well, I have one more question to put to you, my dear Hubert. Is it true that you officiated at your grandfather's funeral?' asked Dame Beatrice.

'I? Oh, dear me, no. I had no idea he was dead until I had a letter from Willoughby to tell me so, and to inform me that we should get our father's share of the money left him in the Will. I was, even then, in Italy, and had been there for a couple of years. My grandfather was buried long before I got Willoughby's letter.'

'Pelion on Ossa,' said Dame Beatrice. 'I understood that you had been in Italy for merely a matter of months. However, it probably makes no difference, as neither you nor your brother was invited to the house- warming at Galliard Hall.'

'Pelion on Ossa?' repeated the Reverend Hubert. 'No, I assure you! My stipend is anything but large. The money came, after probate had been granted, and I was exceedingly grateful for it.'

'That was not what I meant,' said Dame Beatrice.

'What did you mean, ma'am,' asked Kirkby, 'apart from what you said about the house-warming?'

'Only that, if I were Willoughby's murderer, I would be inclined to exclaim, 'How all occasions do inform against me!' I am not Willoughby's murderer, but what was a theory of mine is now in a fair way of becoming susceptible of proof. Tell me, Mr Kirkby, why do people lie?'

'From fear, in the hope of gain, for social reasons or just because they're made that way,' said Kirkby.

(2)

'Of course,' said Dame Beatrice to Laura, that same evening, 'we get a different and a more interesting picture if we reverse our point of view.'

'About what?'

'About which party to believe. Led partly by your almost violent antipathy to our fosterling, I long ago examined matters afresh. Let us look at them together. For some little time I accepted Rosamund's story as being true in the main. What if Romilly and, particularly, Judith, are speaking the truth, and Rosamund has been lying?'