'The shipping magnate.'
'Money?'
'Lots.'
Leeyes nodded, satisfied.
'They have a baby girl,' went on Sloan.
'Henrietta?'
'Henrietta Eleanor Leslie Mantriot.' Sloan paused. 'When she's about six weeks old her father comes home on leave to Great Rooden and there's a terrible—er—incident.'
'What?' bluntly.
'According to the reports at the time Captain Hugo Mantriot went completely out of his mind, shot his wife and then himself. The Coroner was very kind—said some soothing sentences about the man's mind being turned by his wartime experiences and so forth. The whole thing played down as much as possible, of course.'
Leeyes grunted.
'Twenty-four people had been killed by a flying bomb in Calleford the same week—the police had more than enough to do—the Coroner hinted that the Mantriots were really casualties of war in very much the same way as the flying bomb victims…'
'Arbican kill them both?' suggested Leeyes briefly.
'I shouldn't wonder, sir, at all, though we're not likely to find out at this stage.' Sloan turned over a new page in his notebook. 'Mrs. Mantriot had made a new will when the baby was born. I've had someone turn it up for me in Somerset House this morning and read it out. She created a trust for the baby should anything happen to either parent…'
'She being at risk as much as he was in those days,' put in Leeyes, who could remember them.
'Exactly, sir. Those were the days when things did happen to people, besides which her husband was on active service and there was a fair bit of money involved. So she created this trust with the trustees as…'
'Don't tell me,' groaned Leeyes.
'That's right, sir. Waind, Arbican & Waind. After all, of course, it's only guesswork on my part…'
'Well?'
'I reckon Grace Jenkins was already in the employment of the Mantriots as the baby's nanny. She was a daughter of Jenkins at Holly Tree Farm in Rooden Parva which isn't all that far away…'
'So?'
'I think Arbican suggested to her that she look after the baby. Probably put it into her mind that the infant shouldn't be told about the murder and suicide of her parents—that would seem a pretty disgraceful thing to a simple country girl like her.'
Leeyes grunted.
'From there,' said Sloan, 'it's a fairly easy step to getting her to pass the baby off as her own until the child was twenty-one. All done with the highest motives, of course.'
'Of course,' agreed Leeyes. 'And he keeps them both, I suppose?'
'That's right. Sets Grace Jenkins up in a remote cottage, maintains the household at a distance and not very generously at that…'
'Verisimilitude,' said Leeyes.
'Pardon, sir?'
'You wouldn't expect a widow and child to have a lot of money.'
'No, sir, of course not. Grace Jenkins falls for it like a lamb. Takes along a photograph of her own brother to forestall questions, and Hugo Mantriot's medals, and puts her back into bringing up Master Hugo's baby as if it's her own.'
'Then what?'
'Then nothing, sir, for nearly twenty-one years. During which time the Wainds in the firm die off, public memory dies down and Felix Arbican gets through a fair slice of what Bruce Leslie left his daughter.'
'The day of reckoning,' said Leeyes slowly, 'would be Henrietta's twenty-first birthday.'
'That's right. Grace Jenkins had no intention of carrying the pretence further than that. She was a loyal servant and an honest woman.'
'So?'
'She had to go,' said Sloan simply, 'and before Henrietta came back from University.'
'He just overlooked the one thing,' said Sloan.
It was the afternoon now and Sloan and Crosby were sitting in the Rectory drawing room. In spite of all her protestations Henrietta had gone to the Rectory the previous night—or rather, in the early hours of the morning— after all. Bill Thorpe and P. C. Hepple had escorted her there to make—as Sloan said at the time—assurance doubly sure. Once there Mrs. Meyton had taken it upon herself to protect her from all comers and she had been allowed to sleep on through the morning.
Now they were all foregathered in the Rectory again—bar the main consultant, so to speak. The case was nearly over, the Rectory china looked suitably unfragile and Mrs. Meyton's teapot as if it contained tea of a properly dark brown hue—so Sloan had consented to a cup.
'Just one thing,' he repeated.
Nobody took a lot of notice. Henrietta and Bill Thorpe were looking at each other as if for the very first time. Mrs. Meyton was counting cups. Constable Crosby seemed preoccupied with a large bruise that was coming up on his knuckle.
'What was that?' asked Mrs. Meyton with Christian kindness.
'That a routine post-mortem would establish the fact of Grace Jenkins's childlessness.'
'Otherwise?'
'Otherwise I doubt if we would have looked further than a Road Traffic Accident. We wouldn't have had any reason to…'
'Then what?' put in Bill Thorpe.
'Then nothing very much,' said Sloan. 'Inspector Harpe would have added it to his list of unsolved hit-and- runs and that would have been that. Miss Mantriot would…'
Henrietta looked quite startled. 'No one's ever called me that before.'
Sloan smiled and continued. 'Miss Mantriot would have gone back to university none the wiser. She's twenty-one next month. The only likely occasion for her to need a birth certificate after that would be for a passport.'
Bill Thorpe nodded. 'And if it wasn't forthcoming, she wouldn't even know where to begin to look.'
'Exactly.'
'Hamstrung,' said Bill Thorpe expressively.
'But,' said Henrietta, 'what about her telling me she had been a Miss Wright before she married?'
Sloan's expression relaxed a little. 'I never met Grace Jenmiss, but I've—well—come to respect her quite a bit in the last week. I think she had what you might call an ironic sense of humour. This Wright business…'
'Yes?'
'I expect you've all heard the expression about Mr. Right coming along.'
Henrietta coloured. 'Yes.'
'Me,' said Bill Thorpe brightly.
'Perhaps,' said Sloan. 'In her case I think when she had to choose a maiden name so to speak—she chose Wright in reverse.'
'Well done, Grace Jenkins,' said Mr. Meyton.
'That's what I think too, sir,' said Sloan. 'The same thing applies in a way with the Hocklington-Garwells who had us running round in circles for a bit.'
'What about it?'
'When she had to choose the name of a family she'd worked for—you know the sort of questions children ask, and she couldn't very well say Mantriot—I think she put tothe names of two people involved in an old Calleshire scandal.'
'Hocklington and Garwell?'
'That's right. I gather it was a pretty well-known affair in the county in the old days.'
