all kinds of violence broke out and neither life nor property was safe. Every sort of bestiality was practised, cattle were stolen or killed, and not only Europeans, but fellow-Africans who didn't belong to Mau Mau, were butchered.
'Our own boys, being Masai, were not involved, but that didn't keep us out of trouble. Three times the plantation was overrun, and the third time Lestrange was killed and I was very lucky to escape before the evil business began to die down. Well, after a time, the thing was brought more or less under control. However, to us who knew the country, it was easy enough to see what was going to happen. African nationalism was up on its hind-legs, and by 1960 the political initiative was with the Africans. You'll have read or heard about all this, so I needn't elaborate. It's ancient history now.
'The next thing we feared was a new Mau Mau rising. Some of us sold up and went to Southern Rhodesia or South Africa. As I told you (I think), I was one of them. I settled in Natal. I came to England in 1966 when I heard that Felix Napoleon Lestrange, Romilly's father, had died, and the rest you know.'
'Now let's have the details,' said Kirkby. 'No doubt you have given us a very interesting potted version of the history of Kenya from 1938 to 1960 or so, but we are far more interested in the history of your dealings with Romilly Lestrange and his family during that time.'
'I'm coming to all that, but you had to get the set-up clearly in your mind. I wouldn't want you to think that I was responsible for Lestrange's death. I liked him. We got on well together.'
'Be that as it may-and it's not my purpose to enquire into it at present-what gave you the idea of impersonating him after he was dead?' asked Kirkby. 'We can see you did it to benefit yourself, but how did it begin? Let's have the whole story, shall we?'
'Oh, yes, if you wish it. You seem to know how bad Romilly's sight was. Well, on one occasion, he broke one pair of glasses and had mislaid the other pair, so he asked me to read his mail for him. It was rare enough for either of us to get letters. We didn't talk about the past, either. I knew he had a brother, and the letters I read on that first occasion came from the lawyers and from Lestrange's grandfather. Both were to tell him that his brother had died.'
'Did he seem distressed?' asked Dame Beatrice.
'No. He said, 'Poor old Caesar,' but that was about all. Oh, he added that he supposed he was now the only one left. He told me he was illegitimate, but had always got on well with his father. The legitimate son had been killed in the war, and old Felix Napoleon had gone on to say that he was acting as guardian to this son's daughter, a charge that would devolve on Romilly later.'
'And the lawyer's letter was to confirm this, I suppose,' said Kirkby. 'All clear so far. Then what happened?'
'Nothing, until Romilly got killed. We'd been overrun, as I said, but Lestrange and I had never had anything to do with politics, and Mau Mau was basically a political movement, although its bestialities had nothing to do with the government or the majority of Africans. Lestrange had been in Nairobi for two or three days. He and his party were ambushed and slaughtered on their way home. It wasn't Lestrange himself they were after. He simply happened to be there. Almost immediately after this particular 'incident'-to use the cant phrase-troops were drafted in, and Mau Mau went under cover.
'Well, when I knew what had happened, I went through Lestrange's papers and began to pack up his personal belongings with a view to sending them to his relatives. Among the letters I found an old one from his brother Caesar in which he said that 'the old man' was not going to forget the two of them in his Will, and, now that Harvard was dead, he thought it might be something substantial.
'Well, I knew who Harvard was, and I was tempted. I thought things over. I knew that Caesar himself was dead by that time, so I decided not to report Romilly's death to the relatives, but to hang on and see what transpired. Once the old man himself was dead-and that was the time for the benefits to be shared out-it seemed to me that, if I chose to represent myself as Romilly Lestrange, there wouldn't, most likely, be anybody to gainsay it.
'Well, as I told you, things didn't go any too well, and I cleared out of Kenya and went to Natal. I took care, when I got there, to let the lawyers know where I was. I knew that Lestrange had never communicated with them direct, so that there was no chance they'd recognise a forged signature. You can work out the rest for yourselves.'
'We'd rather hear it from you,' said Kirkby. 'Do go on. You chose to pretend that you were Romilly Lestrange.'
'Yes, well,' said the pretender, 'I couldn't see that it would do anybody any harm, and I thought it might do me quite a lot of good, if I could pass myself off as Romilly. Then came the business of the girl Trilby-Rosamund to you-who turned out to be the heiress. By the time I heard from her I'd bought a small property in Yorkshire (with my own money, I might tell you) and had decided to stay in England and settle down. I'd given the lawyers my address at their request, and they, it seems, had passed it on.'
'Miss Lestrange wrote to you, then?'
'She did. She pointed out that, with the exception of some cousins whom she didn't know, I was her only surviving relative, and she asked whether she could come and visit me. Naturally, I was a bit flummoxed by this, but, as I thought it might look suspicious if I refused to see her, I wrote back to say that she would be welcome, and she came along.'
'Was Judith living with you at the time?' Dame Beatrice asked.
'Yes. I met her and Luke, my servant, in South Africa. We're not married, neither is she anything more than my housekeeper, no matter what you may think. I suppose Trilby has told you something different, but that is the truth. Well, Trilby came to see us, but Judith didn't like the Yorkshire house, so when Galliard Hall came on to the market for rent, not purchase, we came down here, and Trilby came along with us. That was just over a year ago.'
'For rent?' repeated Dame Beatrice. 'Did that include the furniture and the fittings?'
'Yes. Why do you ask? It included everything. The lawyers gave me excellent references, especially as Trilby was with me.'
'It would account for the pictures which the real Romilly Lestrange would have recognised, although you did not. What made the owners leave such valuable paintings in the house?'
'They are travelling abroad, and are spending time with relatives in America and Australia. I have the house on a three-year lease and everything in it is fully insured, or so the owners told me. I've never bothered to
