Last Respects

Her tryal comes on in the afternoon.

« ^ »

At first it was impossible for Detective Inspector Sloan, to tell if Elizabeth Busby was understanding the import of his questions.

She answered them readily enough.

She showed him Peter Hinton’s note.

“It’s in his handwriting, miss, I take it?”

“I hadn’t thought it wasn’t,” she said uncertainly. “But I couldn’t swear to it.”

“Did he usually sign his name in full?”

“He hadn’t—that is we didn’t—write much. There was the telephone, you see.”

“I see, miss.”

“It was written with his pen,” she said quickly. “He always wrote with a proper nib.”

Later she showed him what was really troubling her. The slide rule.

Sloan regarded it in silence.

“He must have come back,” she said, “and sat here after that last time.”

“Could he be sure you wouldn’t appear?” said Sloan.

“Towards the end,” she said, a tremor creeping into her voice, “we never left Aunt Celia alone.”

“So,” said Sloan slowly, “if Mr. Mundill was down here in the hall you would be certain to be upstairs.”

“Yes, that’s right. We took it in turns.”

“I see,” said Sloan. Disquiet was the word for what he was feeling about Peter Hinton. “And you’re sure your only disagreement the last time he was here was over whether your aunt should be in hospital?”

“Disagreement is too strong a word, Inspector.” She’d recounted all the details of the last time she’d seen Peter Hinton. “Hospital was just something we talked about, that’s all. Peter kept on suggesting it and we didn’t want it. You can see that, can’t you?”

“Yes, miss.” He cleared his throat. “You don’t happen to know if he ever broke his ankle, do you?”

“When he was seven,” she said immediately. “He fell off a swing. Why do you ask?”

It is an undoubted fact that, once set in motion, routine gathers a momentum all of its own.

That was how it came about that Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby, standing by a dead Horace Boiler, were visited by a police motor-cyclist. He drew up before them, coming to a standstill with the inescapable flourish of all motor-cyclists, and handed over an envelope. Crosby tore it open.

“It’s a copy of Celia Mundill’s will, sir.”

Routine took more stopping than did initiative. Surely there was a moral to be drawn there…

“Well?”

Crosby scanned it quickly.

Routine, thought Sloan, took on a certain strength too. Perhaps that was because it wasn’t challenged often enough.

“It’s short and sweet,” said Crosby.

It seemed a very long time ago that Sloan had asked for it.

“She left,” read out the constable, “a life interest in all her estate to her husband.”

It occurred to Sloan that Mrs. Celia Mundill may very well have been in that delicate situation for a woman of being rather richer than the man she married. Certainly they had been living in her old family home and her husband’s profession was conducted from her father’s old studio.

“With everything,” carried on Crosby, “to go to her only niece at his death.”

“Including her share in the Camming patents,” concluded Sloan aloud. Mrs. Mundill, then, had seen her role as a fiduciary one—a trustee for the past, handing down the flame to the future.

“And if the niece dies before the husband, then,” said Crosby, “her sister collects.”

“What else?”

“Nothing else,” said Crosby.

“Date?” said Sloan peremptorily. There was a time to every purpose, the Bible said. The time for writing a will might be important.

Crosby looked at the paper. “April this year, sir.”

The time had mattered then.

In olden days men would begin their last will and testament with their name and then add the prescient words “and like to die.” The practice of medicine might not have amounted to very much in those days but at least then patients knew where they stood in relation to death, the great reaper. He wondered if Mrs. Celia Mundill had been “like to die” in April. If so she must have known it, too, and made her will.

And presumably her peace with the world.

Crosby started to fold up the paper again.

“Nothing,” enquired Sloan appositely, “about remarriage?”

Wills were funny things. They lay dormant for years—like the seeds of some plants—and then something would stir their testators into activity again. Old wills would be torn up and new wills would be written. Or the testator died.

Crosby checked the will. “Nothing about the remarriage of the widower.”

A time to get, and a time to lose, as Ecclesiastes had it.

No, not that.

A time to keep, and a time to cast away.

That was more like it.

Crosby folded the will neatly away. “Nothing for us in that.”

“It doesn’t appear to change anything,” agreed Sloan cautiously.

That was the important thing with testamentary dispositions and crime.

“The widower’s income doesn’t change anyway,” said Crosby.

“His death would matter to the girl,” said Sloan. “That’s all.”

Crosby frowned. “Then she would scoop the pool, wouldn’t she?”

“One day,” said Sloan moderately, “she’s going to be worth quite a lot of money.” It didn’t weigh against a bruised heart; he was old enough to know that.

“I wonder if that boy-friend of hers knew how rich before he ditched her,” said Crosby.

In an ordinary man it would have been an unworthy thought; it was a perfectly proper one in a police officer.

“He didn’t ditch her,” said Sloan absently. He was sure about that now. “Somebody did for him. And put him in the river.”

“Poor little rich girl,” commented Crosby. He waved the will in the air. “What’s this got to do with it all then, sir?”

“Probably nothing at all,” said Sloan. The widower’s income was assured, the niece’s long-term future secure. “Money isn’t everything, though,” Sloan reminded the constable. It had been one of his mother’s favourite sayings. It applied—with a certain irony—to some crime too.

“Comes in handy, though, doesn’t it, sir. Money…”

“It’s only one currency,” insisted Sloan. “There are others.”

There was fear—and hate.

With Horace Boiler now it looked very much as if someone had been trading in silence. From the dead man’s point of view it had been dearly bought. Sloan turned his attention back to the old fisherman. Not that looking at him was going to tell the police anything. What Sloan needed was a view into the man’s mind before he had been killed.

“He found the body,” mused Sloan aloud.

“He took us up river afterwards,” said Crosby.

“He took Ridgeford out too,” said Sloan, “to collect it.”