“He wasn’t sure what flight he could get on Christmas Day, but he said he hoped he could be in Worthing by five and he would go straight to the hospital. I didn’t dare tell Maurice when I saw him this afternoon, in case he didn’t come after all. Poor Maurice, he was looking so fragile, I almost didn’t believe he’d get better. I just sat by his bed and did some sewing and wished that Derek would come. And then he did. And Maurice said, ‘Oh, Derek, I’m so sorry,’ and Derek said ‘So I should think, silly old thing,’ and kissed him. So then I thought I’d come home.”
And almost straightaway, it seems, Maurice began to get better. When my aunt rang the hospital a few minutes ago, they said he was well enough to be taken off the plastic tube and be given some proper food. Derek’s staying there overnight, of course.
We have been having a glass of champagne to celebrate and are feeling quite festive, after all.
26th December
I hardly know now whether to send this — poor Maurice died early this morning.
Julia
15
AT THIS JUNCTURE, dear reader, you have, if I may say so, the advantage of me. You cannot have imagined me, I hope, so careless of the proper duty of an historian as to burden you with documents irrelevant to the subject of my narrative: you have therefore assumed, during your perusal of this exchange of letters, that there was some significant connection between the events related in them; you have drawn inferences which seem to you too obvious to be overlooked. Having had no grounds, however, for relying on the same premise, I would ask you not to judge me too severely for my slowness in arriving at the same conclusions.
Moreover, I first read these letters merely by way of diversion, while waiting in the Corkscrew for my friends on a cold evening in early February; I had no reason to subject them to the searching gaze of Scholarship, as evidence of something sinister and perhaps still dangerous. It is right to say, however, that even if I had studied them with the utmost care and at once reached all those conclusions which could correctly have been drawn, I would still not have known enough to prevent another death.
Julia arrived pink nosed and shivering, having dressed with incurable optimism in expectation of spring, and purchased a bottle of burgundy as a precaution against pneumonia.
“I’m sorry to see,” I said, “that your Christmas holiday came to such an unhappy end. Did you stay long in Sussex after Maurice’s death?”
“About three days, which I shall look back on as entirely occupied with making tea for Daphne. Poor Daphne, she was terribly upset, of course. Well, as a matter of fact we were all rather upset, but Daphne seemed to have made her mind up to be more upset than anyone else. You see, she had the idea that it was all her fault that Maurice had died.”
“Why should she think that?”
“Because of the Book. The Book, as you may remember, is kept in the drawing room at the Rectory. Daphne left Maurice on his own there while she went into the kitchen to make him a hot drink, and she thinks that he couldn’t resist the chance to have a look at it. And that’s why he died — no one must look at the Book except the Custodian and if they do something terrible will happen to them. So it was her fault for leaving him alone with it. We all did our best to reason with her, but reasoning with Daphne tends to be unproductive.”
“And did you ever meet the interesting Derek Arkwright?”
“No,” said Julia. “No, as a matter of fact I didn’t. After Maurice died, he went straight back to London. He went down to Parsons Haver for the funeral, but that was after I’d left. I’d have stayed, of course, if I’d thought Reg wanted me to, but I had the distinct impression that she rather wanted some time to herself. I gather the funeral passed off without any major embarrassments.” Julia paused and drew deeply on her Gauloise.
I refrained from asking what the minor embarrassments had been.
“And now I’ve just had this peculiar letter from Daphne — I don’t quite know what to do about it.”
The letter was written in large, childish handwriting on a rather grubby sheet of paper evidently torn from an exercise book.
Dear Julia,
It’s horrible having to ask one’s friends to do things for one but I don’t know what else to do. I’ve got a legal problem and I don’t know who else to ask and it’s very urgent. Can you tell me please what happens if someone’s quite old and very ill and someone makes them make a will that isn’t right and not what they really want?
I’m sorry to trouble you when I know you’re very busy and I can’t pay you anything, but I know you’re the sort of person who really cares about justice and doesn’t only do things for money.
Please don’t tell Reg that I have asked you about this as she doesn’t want me to do anything about it and I don’t want to upset her.
Gratefully remembering all your help and kindness in my time of terrible sadness,
Daphne
“I suppose,” said Julia, with a rather weary sigh, “that I ought to ring her up and try to find out what she’s talking about. But the trouble is that when one starts a conversation with Daphne there never seems to be any way of ending it. So what I thought I’d do — ah, there’s Ragwort.”
His attention drawn by her welcoming wave, Ragwort joined us at our table.
“Now,” said Julia, “let me pour you a glass of burgundy to keep the cold out and tell me all you know about the law on undue influence.”
“By all means,” said Ragwort. “But why do you want to know about undue influence? I wouldn’t have thought it was the sort of thing that usually arises in tax cases.”
“It isn’t, that’s why I’m asking you.” She handed him Daphne’s letter.
“Well,” said Ragwort, having read it, “I suppose the Reverend Maurice must be the elderly testator in question?”
“I can’t think of anyone else it could be. And I’m afraid the person she’s accusing must be Derek Arkwright — it sounds to me as if Maurice must have made a will leaving him something quite substantial. And what worries me is that the most likely time for him to have done that is the night he died.”
“Oh,” said Ragwort, looking rather stern.
“Yes,” said Julia, looking despondent.
“That is to say,” said Ragwort, “when the Reverend Maurice was gravely ill in hospital and possibly disoriented, and Arkwright was virtually alone with him for several hours?”
“Yes,” said Julia again, looking still more despondent.
“Well, it may be all right, of course, but on the other hand it may not. I really don’t think you can just sit back and do nothing.”
“No,” said Julia, renouncing with manifest regret the course of action most congenial to her temperament. “No, I don’t think I can. After all, I was rather fond of Maurice. If Derek really put pressure on him to do something he didn’t want to—”
“And we already know that Arkwright is a rather dubious character — quite apart from his using a false name, there’s the matter of the Virgil frontispiece.”
“Yes. So now you know why I want to know about undue influence.”
Ragwort’s exposition of the law on this subject, which included numerous references to decisions of the Court of Appeal,
