‘Mr Colston?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Could we have word with you? It’s the C.I.D.’
‘The car lights are on,’ said Godfrey.
‘It’s about your sister,’ said the senior-looking of the men, ‘Dame Lettie Colston, I’m afraid.’
Next day was Sunday. ‘Hoax Caller Strikes at Last’, declared the headlines. ‘Aged Welfare Worker killed in bed. Jewellery and valuables missing.’
FIFTEEN
‘If you look for one thing,’ said Henry Mortimer to his wife, ‘you frequently find another.’
Mrs Mortimer was opening and closing her mouth like a bird. This was because she was attempting to feed a two-year-old boy with a spoon, and as he opened his mouth to take each spoonful of soft egg, she involuntarily opened hers. This child was her grandson whom she was minding while her daughter was confined with a second child.
Mrs Mortimer wiped the infant’s mouth and pushed a jug of milk out of his reach.
‘Look for one thing and you find another,’ said Henry Mortimer. ‘They found twenty-two different wills amongst Lettie Colston’s papers, dated over the past forty years.
‘Silly woman,’ said Emmeline Mortimer, ‘to change her mind so often.’ She tickled the cheek of her grandson and clucked into his face, and while his mouth was open in laughter she popped in the last spoonful of egg, most of which he spluttered out. ‘I was sorry for poor old Godfrey breaking down at the inquest. He must have been fond of his sister,’ she said.
She gave the child his mug of milk which he clutched in both hands and drank noisily, his eyes bright above the rim, darting here and there.
When the child was settled in a play-pen in the garden Mrs Mortimer said to her husband,
‘What’s that you were saying about poor Lettie Colston’s wills?’
‘The chaps were checking up on her papers in the course of routine, in case they should provide any clue to the murder, and of course they checked up on all her beneficiaries. Quite a list out of twenty-two consecutive wills.’
‘The murderer wasn’t known to her, was he?’
‘No — oh no, this was before they got him. They were checking up, and…’
Dame Lettie’s murderer had been caught within three weeks of her death and was now awaiting trial. In those three weeks, however, her papers had been thoroughly examined, and those of the beneficiaries of her twenty-two wills who were still alive had been quietly traced, checked, and dismissed from suspicion. Only one name had proved a very slight puzzle; Lisa O’Brien of Nottingham, whose name appeared in a bequest dated 1918. The records, however, showed that Lisa Brooke, nee Sidebottome, aged 33, had married a man named Matthew O’Brien aged 40 at Nottingham in that year. The C.I.D. did not look much further. Lisa O’Brien in the will must be a woman of advanced years by now, and in fact, it emerged that she was dead; O’Brien himself, if still alive, would be beyond the age of the suspect. The police were no longer interested, and ticked the name O’Brien off their list.
Henry Mortimer, however, as one acquainted with the murdered woman and her circle, had been approached, and had undertaken to investigate any possible connexion between the murder and the anonymous telephone calls. Not that the police believed these calls had taken place; every possible means of detection had failed, and they had concluded with the support of their psychologists that the old people were suffering from hallucinations.
The public, however, had to be satisfied. Henry Mortimer was placed in charge of this side of the case. The police were able to announce:
The possibility of a connexion between the murder and the anonymous telephone calls which the murdered woman was reported to receive from time to time before her death is being investigated.
Mortimer fulfilled his duties carefully. Like his colleagues, he suspected the murderer to be a chance criminal. Like his colleagues, he knew the anonymous voice would never be traced in flesh and blood. Nevertheless, he examined the police documents, and finally sent in a report which enabled the police to issue a further statement:
The authorities are satisfied that there is no connexion between the murder of Dame Lettie Colston and the anonymous telephone calls of which she had been complaining some months before her death.
Meantime, however, Henry had noticed the details of Lisa O’-Brien, and was interested.
‘You look for one thing and you find another,’ he had said to himself. For he had never before heard of this, marriage of Lisa’s. Her first marriage with rich old Brooke had been dissolved in 1912. Her secret marriage with Guy Leet had recently come to light, when Guy had claimed her fortune. But Matthew O’Brien — Henry did not recall any Matthew O’Brien. He must be quite old now, probably dead.
He had requested the C.I.D. to check further on Matthew O’Brien. And they had found him quite quickly, in a mental home in Folkestone where he had been resident for more than forty years.
‘And so,’ said Mortimer to his wife, ‘you look for one thing and you find another.’
‘Do Janet and Ronald Sidebottome know anything of this husband?’ said Mrs Mortimer.
‘Yes, they remember him quite well. Lisa went touring Canada with him. They didn’t hear from her for a year. When she turned up again she told them he had been killed in an accident.’
‘How long has he been in this mental home?’
‘Since 1919 — a few months after their marriage. Janet is going down to identify him tomorrow.’
‘That will be difficult after all these years.
‘It is only a formality. The man is undoubtedly Matthew O’Brien whom Lisa Brooke married in 1918.’
‘And she said he was dead?’
‘Yes, she did.’
‘Well, what about Guy Leet? Didn’t she marry him? That makes them bigamists, doesn’t it?’
