week and she should be over it by then. I shouldn’t like to put them off-that sort of thing gives the house a bad name.”
“Disgusting old man!” Eleanor burst out as soon as they were back in their room. “Heartless, money-grubbing brute! And I thought he was nice!”
“I’m disappointed in him too,” said Pettigrew. He was looking out of the window as he spoke, and his gaze rested on the roof of the outhouse beneath Mrs. Gorman’s room. Remembering what he had seen there a few nights before, he felt it unreasonable that she should be so overcome with grief at her husband’s death. To that extent at least he could sympathize with Mr. Joliffe.
“Those poor little girls!” Eleanor went on. “He hadn’t a word of sympathy for them, of course. I really wonder whether we are doing right in leaving until we’re sure Mrs. Gorman is in a fit state to look after them. I feel quite worried about them.”
That worry at least was dispelled when, the packing completed, Pettigrew sought out Mr. Joliffe to settle his account. He found him closeted with his granddaughters, and it was obvious at a glance that a condition of complete sympathy existed between them. Beryl was sitting in the corner absorbing a sweet of the type known to Pettigrew in his youth as a gob-stopper. Though her face bore traces of recent tears, she looked resigned, and even contented. Doreen was close to her grandfather’s side, and it was evident that Pettigrew had interrupted an intimate colloquy between them. Her expression was subdued and serious, and for the first time Pettigrew was aware of her strong resemblance to her mother. But what struck him most was the look of utter confidence on one side and deep affection on the other.
In a gentler voice than usual, Joliffe told the two girls to “run along” while he did his business with the departing guest. “They’re all I have, Mr. Pettigrew,” he said softly as the door closed behind them. The sentimental expression vanished from his face as he went on, almost without pause, “Was it one or two early morning teas you had on Saturday?”
Pettigrew paid his bill. Mr. Joliffe shook him warmly by the hand and expressed the hope that they would meet again another year. “The rooms will be there,” he said, “and if Mrs. Gorman is there to look after you, you’ll be welcome. It just doesn’t pay if you have to give a woman wages to attend to the summer visitors. My daughter was talking of setting up house on her own, but now this has happened I am hoping she will change her mind.”
Pettigrew must have shown something of what he felt, for Joliffe went on, “You think I’m lacking in sympathy for my daughter, sir, but if you’d known my son-in-law you’d think different. He was a ne’er-do-well, and that’s the long and the short of it. I don’t mind telling you that first to last he cost me a lot of money. Thank Heaven, he’s left my girl well provided for!”
After this, Pettigrew could not resist the temptation of adding to Mr. Joliffe’s financial worries by demanding a twopenny stamp on his receipt.
Mallett was out when the Pettigrews returned to Sunbeam Cottage and he did not put in an appearance until just before supper.
“I’ve been having a chat with the Detective Inspector,” he said. “Luckily we’re on fairly good terms.”
He filled three glasses with sherry and handed them round. “Inquest’s on Thursday, it seems. At Polton. Your very good healths, sir and madam.”
The sherry was of a quality to command Pettigrew’s respect, but for the moment his mind was on lower things.
“What else did he tell you?” he asked.
“I didn’t like to ask any direct questions, because he’s a sensitive sort of man, and might have resented them, coming from me. But I gathered that death was due to a blow in the chest. The Inspector seems to be working on the theory that it was a motor car, but it might have been something else, so far as he can tell until he gets the report of the P.M.”
“But he wasn’t found on the road,” Eleanor put in.
“Quite so, ma’am. It seems the body had been moved after death.”
“And death was-when?”
“It was the answer to that question that I was angling for all along, of course, but it took me a long time to bring him round to it. And the answer-again without waiting for the pathologist’s report-appears to be, late last night or first thing this morning.”
Mallett looked at Eleanor. Eleanor looked at Frank. Frank looked at his glass. Nobody said anything for a moment.
“So that lets you out, Mr. Pettigrew,” said Mallett cheerfully.
“Yes. That lets me out, doesn’t it? I’m simply a second-sighted, temperamental sufferer from precognition. It’s nice to know. It only remains to enjoy the rest of the holiday.” He drank off his glass with a singular absence of enjoyment.
The appearance of supper restored Pettigrew’s spirits, and by the end of the evening he was able to discuss the case of Jack Gorman-for it was impossible to keep away from it for long-in his usual vein of cheerful detachment.
“I must go to the inquest,” he said. “Usually they are dull affairs, though the last one I attended turned out to be unexpectedly exciting. But one wants to know something of the background to appreciate them properly. There’s an odd background to this case, obviously. I’d like to know why he wasn’t living with his wife and family, to begin with.”
“I can answer that one,” said Mallett. “The Gorman family row made quite a noise in the neighbourhood last year. Everyone expected Joliffe to prosecute, but he was persuaded not to in the end.”
“I have it on Mr. Joliffe’s authority that his son-in-law was a ne’er-do-well, who cost him a lot of money. Was the projected prosecution for embezzlement, by any chance?”
“Yes. I’d better tell the story from the beginning, so far as I know it. The Gormans are a well-known family in these parts, and Jack Gorman was the best known of the lot when he was a bachelor. He was very good-looking for one thing, a first-rate horseman and a good shot-a wonderful dancer, I believe. It’s not surprising he attracted Edna Joliffe.”
“What is surprising to me is that her father ever allowed her to marry him.”
“She married without his consent. He wouldn’t speak to her for years. She is a very determined little woman, in her quiet way, you know. She needed a lot of determination to stick to Jack, as it turned out. He was a rolling stone, though his travels didn’t take him further south than Exeter or further east than Bristol. He tried a lot of things-a bit of farming, a good deal of horse-coping, keeping a seaside hotel. He lost money at all of them, and at his last job he lost his licence into the bargain. Finally his father-in-law took pity on him -or rather on his own daughter and grandchildren. He took him and the family into Sallowcombe, and found Jack a job in the butchery business at Whitsea, with the prospect of a partnership if he made the grade.”
“What made him change his mind like that? It seems out of character.”
“I’ve only gossip to go on for this, but I fancy it’s reliable. You may have noticed that Joliffe is not exactly uninterested in money. Well about this time the rumour began to go round that Jack had pretty substantial expectations under the will of some aged Gorman or another. I told you there was supposed to be money in the family somewhere, you may remember.”
“I think I know where. But go on.”
“Joliffe was prepared to forgive a good deal in a son-in-law with expectations, and it was a wonderful chance for Jack, if he could have kept straight. But you might as well have tried to straighten a corkscrew. The job lasted just a year, and at the end of that time old Joliffe had his accounts specially audited. That was the end of Master Jack’s career in the butchery trade. It was the end of his marriage too, to all intents. For when he went, Edna decided to stay with her father, and I for one don’t blame her.”
“She didn’t mean to stay any longer than she had to,” said Pettigrew. “She was going back to her husband as soon as he came into his money.”
“I don’t know where you got that from, sir. But even if it’s true, she might have had to wait a very long time.”
“I got it from two unimpeachable sources-first from the two little girls and then from Mr. Joliffe himself. As for the money, that’s just the irony of it-Jack Gorman came into his inheritance last Sunday.”
“Did he now?” said Mallett. “That seems a remarkably convenient arrangement.”
