snooper perhaps, a listener at doors.
'I didn't say nothing at the time,' said Mrs. lear nan 'because you see I didn't rightly know. But you see I thought it was queer and I'll admit to a lady like you, who knows what these things are, that I did want to know the truth about it. I'd worked for Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe for some time, I had, and one wants to know how things happened.'
'Quite,' said Mrs. Oliver.
'If I thought I'd done what I oughtn't to have done, well, of course, I'd have owned up to it. But I didn't think as I'd done anything really wrong, you see. Not at the time, if you understand,' she added.
'Oh yes,' said Mrs. Oliver, 'I'm sure I shall understand. Go on. It was about this codicil.'
'Yes, you see one day Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe-she hadn't felt too good that day and so she asked us to come in. Me that was, and young Jim who helps down in the garden and brings the sticks in and the coals, and things like that. So we went into her room, where she was, and she'd got papers before her there on the desk. And she turns to this foreign girl-Miss Olga we all called her-and said 'You go out of the room now, dear, because you mustn't be mixed up in this part of it,' or something like that. So Miss Olga, she goes out of the room and Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, she tells us to come close and she says 'This is my Will, this is.' She's got a bit of blotting paper over the top part of it but the bottom of it's quite clear. She said 'I'm writing something here on this piece of paper and I want you to be a witness of what I've written and of my signature at the end of it.' So she starts writing along the page. Scratchy pen she always used, she wouldn't use Biros or anything like that. And she writes two or three lines of writing and then she signed her name, and then she says to me, 'Now, Mrs. Leaman you write your name there. Your name and your address' and then she says to Jim 'And now you write your name underneath there, and your address too. There. That'll do. Now you've seen me write that and you've seen my signature and you've written your names, both of you, to say that's that.' And then she says 'That's all. Thank you very much.' So we goes out of the room. Well, I didn't think nothing more of it at the time, but I wondered a bit. And it happened as I turns my head just as I was going out of the room. You see the door doesn't always latch properly. You have to give it a pull, to make it click. And so I was doing that-I wasn't really looking, if you know what I mean-'
'I know what you mean,' said Mrs. Oliver, in a non-committal voice.
'And so I sees Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe pull herself up from the chair-she'd got arthritis and had pain moving about sometimes-and go over to the bookcase and she pulled out a book and she puts that piece of paper she'd just signed-in an envelope it was-in one of the books.
A big tall book it was in the bottom shelf.
And she sticks it back in the bookcase.
Well, I never thought of it again, as you might say. No, really I didn't. But when all this fuss came up, well, of course I felt -at least, I-' She came to a stop.
Mrs. Oliver had one of her useful intuitions.
'But surely,' she said, 'you didn't wait as long as all that-'
'Well, I'll tell you the truth, I will. I'll admit I was curious. After all, I mean, you want to know when you've signed anything, what you've signed, don't you? I mean, it's only human nature.'
'Yes,' said Mrs. Oliver, 'it's only human nature.'
Curiosity, she thought, was a highly component part in Mrs. Leaman human nature.
'So I will admit that next day, when Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe had driven into Medchester and I was doing her bedroom as usual-a bed sitting room she had because she had to rest a lot. And I thinks 'Well, one ought really to know when you've signed a thing, what it is you've signed.' I mean they always say with these hire purchase things, you should read the small print.'
'Or in this case, the handwriting,' suggested Mrs. Oliver.
'So I thought, well, there's no harm-it's not as though I was taking anything. I mean to say I'd had to sign my name there, and I thought I really ought to know what I'd signed. So I had a look along the bookshelves. They needed dusting anyway.
And I found the one. It was on the bottom shelf. It was an old book, a sort of Queen Victoria's kind of book. And I found this envelope with a folded paper in it and the title of the book said Enquire Within upon Everything. And it seemed then as though it was, sort of meant, if you know what I mean?'
'Yes,' said Mrs. Oliver.
'It was clearly meant. And so you took out the paper and looked at it.'
'That's right. Madam. And whether I did wrong or not I don't know.
But anyway, there it was. It was a legal document all right. On the last page there was the writing what she'd made the morning before. New writing with a new scratchy pen she was using. It was clear enough to read, though, although she had a rather spiky handwriting.'
'And what did it say?' said Mrs. Oliver, her curiosity now having joined itself to that previously felt by Mrs. Leaman.
'Well, it said something like, as far as I remember-the exact words I'm not quite sure of-something about a codicil and that after the legacies mentioned in her Will, she bequeathed her entire fortune to Olga-I'm not sure of the surname, it began with an S. Seminoff, or something like that-in consideration of her great kindness and attention to her during her illness. And there it was written down and she'd signed it and I'd signed it, and Jim had signed it. So I put it back where it was because I shouldn't like Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe to know that I'd been poking about in her things.
'But well, I said to myself, well, this is a surprise. And I thought, fancy that foreign girl getting all that money because we all know as Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe was very rich. Her husband had been in shipbuilding and he'd left her a big fortune, and I thought, well, some people have all the luck. Mind you, I wasn't particularly fond of Miss Olga myself. She had a sharp way with her sometimes and she had quite a bad temper. But I will say as she was always very attentive and polite and all that, to the old lady. Looking out for herself all right, she was, and she got away with it. And I thought, well, leaving all that money away from her own family.
Then I thought, well, perhaps she's had a tiff with them and likely as not that will blow over, so maybe she'll tear this up and make another Will and codicil after all.
But anyway, that was that, and I put it back and I forgot about it, I suppose.
'But when all the fuss came up about the Will, and there was talk of how it had been forged and Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe could never have written that codicil herself-for that's what they were saying, mind you, as it wasn't the old lady who had written that at all, it was somebody else-'
'I see,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'And so, what did you do?'
'I didn't do anything. And that's what's worrying me? I didn't get the hang of things at once. And when I'd thought things over a bit I didn't know rightly what I ought to do and I thought, well, it was all talk because the Lawyers were against the foreigner, like people always are. I'm not very fond of foreigners myself, I'll admit. At any rate, there it was, and the young lady herself was swan king about, giving herself airs, looking as pleased as Punch and I thought, well, maybe it's all a legal thing of some kind and they'll say she's no right to the money because she wasn't related to the old lady. So everything will be all right.
And it was in a way because, you see, they gave up the idea of bringing the case. It didn't come to court at all and as far as anyone knew.
Miss Olga ran away. Went off back to the Continent somewhere, where she came from. So it looks as though there must have been some hocus pocus of some kind on her part. Maybe she threatened the old lady and made her do it. You never know, do you? One of my nephews who's going to be a doctor, says you can do wonderful things with hypnotism. I thought perhaps she hypnotised the old lady.'
'This was how long ago?'
'Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe's been dead for-let me see, nearly two years.'
'And it didn't worry you?'
'No, it didn't worry me. Not at the time. Because you see, I didn't rightly see that it mattered. Everything was all right, there wasn't any question of that Miss Olga getting away with the money, so I
