Pentrip half expected to glimpse her flourishing secateurs as he crunched over the drive’s clean gravel. Instead a curtain twitched as he approached the front door. This was the only acknowledgement of his presence. No one answered his ringing or even, after an impatient five minutes, his more determined knocking. At last he was reduced to shouting through the letter box.
“It’s all right,” he called, somewhat irritably. “It’s only me.”
There was no reply: only the click of a door somewhere inside, and the twitching of a different curtain.
Pentrip reapplied himself to the letter box, stressing that his errand was of the utmost urgency and that he refused to go away until he had been granted an interview. Even this declaration was greeted with silence. Having made it, though, he felt he could not ignominiously withdraw. If he was not to be admitted through the front door, he would lower his social status and apply to the Tradesman’s Entrance.
As that was not open either, he rattled at doors round to the back of the house until he peered in at the French windows. To Hell with the Coules! He would show them. All may be locked and still, but he was convinced someone was about. He had said he would wait, so he would wait. While he waited he circumnavigated the garden. All was newly laid out and orderly except for a little wilderness at the far end; and an attack had been made recently even on that. Rough ground had been broken up behind unpruned bushes.
“I wish my nephew to enjoy my garden,” Miss Coule had said. Pentrip shuddered. Bright sunlight on the early bulbs was not enough to dispel that memory. Suddenly the solicitor wanted nothing more to do with gardens.
Then a bedroom window crashed open, and a woman was screaming at him. “Go away. Go away.” As he approached her, Pentrip was shocked by the change in Inga Coule’s appearance.
“Mrs. Coule?” he murmured. Even as he spoke he comprehended that the words might have been more carefully chosen. Who else but Mrs. Coule should be leaning from her own bedroom window? His inflexion had implied that he had failed to recognize the poised, chic, sophisticated blonde (as the article had described her) in this hollow-eyed, hollow-cheeked, tousle-haired sloven waving wild arms at him from above. He hastened to put himself right. “Is your husband in?”
“No,” she cried, after a banshee screech. “Go away.”
“Mrs. Coule, this is critical,” he insisted. “It really is.” He was aware that he was treading on the thinnest of conversational ice. Was Inga Coule cognizant of the tacit arrangement between her husband and himself? Could she keep a secret? “If I can’t talk to Roger, perhaps I can talk to you. About his aunt.”
Her reply was a scream that sent starlings fluttering from the trees at the bottom of the garden. The window slammed shut. Behind it she could be seen gesticulating and, the solicitor could have sworn, gibbering.
This was as good an answer as any. Obviously Inga Coule knew something of Roger’s aunt, and the memory was not pleasant. The solicitor thoughtfully left. He had enough unpleasant memories of his own.
And they were probably responsible for his nightmares. He dreamed of that rough patch behind the shrubbery. The lumpy soil heaved and shuddered like bedclothes over an uneasy sleeper, while Miss Coule’s voice chattered on—“I leave my nephew to the garden.” Hugo Pentrip woke in a lather. Not only that night, but night after night as the dream recurred.
Brenda was concerned. With the unself-consciousness of the young, she wondered if Mr. Pentrip might not be working too hard. Why didn’t he relax occasionally? Pentrip smiled wanly at her concern; but at the same time recognized that, as an experienced seducer of secretaries, another triumph was within his grasp. How odd that he should need to thank Miss Coule for anything. He would play the strong man in need of ministering angel.
His erotic daydreams were rudely dispelled by reading an unexpected clause in an otherwise impeccably typed draft. “Believing that a woman should always be provided for, I bequeath to my nephew’s widow a permanent residence with constant attendance.”
Jeopardizing his romantic progress, he buzzed furiously for his secretary, and when she appeared, explosively demanded what the hell she thought she was doing. She indignantly defended her work, insisting that the words had been committed to paper exactly as Mr. Pentrip had dictated. To prove her point she produced the relevant tape, which had not been wiped. She was disconcerted when no trace of the intruding clause could be found. She was so sure that she had heard it. She even replayed it to check. Tearfully, she insisted that if she hadn’t heard it, how could she have known what to type? She would never have invented anything so absurd. If she’d been having a joke it would have been funnier than that.
Pentrip’s fury quickly subsided. Ashen-faced he merely requested that the document be retyped, and feebly asked Brenda’s pardon for his outburst. His haggard appearance so touched her that she not only forgive him, but would probably have given herself to him on the spot if he had only made the appropriate advances. However, sunk deep in macabre speculation, he failed to take advantage of either the situation or the girl.
Alone he somberly listed a sequence of events on his scratch pad:
1) Miss Coule had outlined the terms of her will
2) He had reached an accommodation with Roger Coule.
3) Miss Coule had died intestate and Roger had inherited.
4) Miss Coule had added to her will.
5) Roger had disappeared.
6) Miss Coule had added Roger’s wife to her will.
7) ??????
Pentrip preferred not to speculate on what “a permanent residence with constant attendance” might betoken, but guessed it to be less than agreeable to the legatee. Extending the steps he had numbered to 8) and even 9), the solicitor forecast that anyone else benefiting from Miss Coule’s misapplied estate might be due for a nasty shock. Roger and his wife had been the chief beneficiaries—but Hugo Pentrip himself had received a welcome moiety. He wished now to have nothing more to do with the money: if possible to return it.
He suspected he might never talk to Roger Coule again, but that made an interview with Inga Coule even more imperative.
He discovered her, spade in hand, at the bottom of the garden before she had time to take evasive action. She had just uncovered what was left of Roger Coule. “To make sure he was still there,” she explained simply afterwards.
Pentrip glanced into the disturbed grave and instantly regretted the impulse. Professional instincts asserting themselves, he hastily retired behind an unkempt laurel to avoid being sick in front of a client. The worms and Miss Coule’s nephew had evidently got on well together; though the advantage had gone to the worms.
Unsteadily Pentrip assisted Inga Coule into the house and poured out a large brandy for her—with an even larger one for himself. Stunned silence reigned until, two brandies later, Inga began to speak.
“I’m glad it’s over,” she said. “At least it’s off my mind. I suppose the police will have to be told now?”
Pentrip nodded. “How?” he whispered.
“With the spade,” said Inga.
Pentrip’s lips moved silently. “Why?” he mouthed.
Sunlight reflected from an expanse of mirror brilliantly lit—
“She began to follow me about,” she said. No need to inquire who. “Especially in the garden. Roger must have been aware too, because he became very jumpy. I didn’t mention her to him and he didn’t mention her to me. I don’t know whether he wanted to spare my feelings, or whether he knew that I knew so there was no point in talking.
“We had discussed the will in the early days, and how his aunt had never quite got around to signing it. I gathered as our solicitor you were in some way connected, but Roger never went into details. He could be very cagey at times. The old girl was dying anyway and we certainly did nothing to hasten her end—so why should she haunt us?
“Lately Roger had been on about putting a bird bath, or some such outrage in the middle of the lawn. I was completely against the idea—I’d as soon have had stone pixies. We even exchanged words. He seemed to have gone completely dotty about birds—stringing up coconuts, peanuts, lumps of suet… Every morning he sprinkled crumbs on the lawn. He even suggested bird houses round the fences, but I laughed at him.
“I think it was just after that argument when I began to sense her near. At first there were merely quick
