Miles had been carefully working his way round the room. Now he paused at Brand’s side, and said quietly, “As a lawyer, Brand, and speaking quite without prejudice, let me from my experience give you this bit of advice. We’re all bound to be questioned pretty closely about this affair, and I don’t suppose any of us will enjoy it.”
“You’ve nothing to be afraid of,” said Brand belligerently, resenting this suggestion of guidance.
“No? My position is less enviable than you seem to think. We all suspect some kind of hanky-panky about these financial affairs your father was unwise enough to confide to Eustace. I shall very probably be asked—it’s not really relevant, but all manner of irrelevancies crop up in these cases—if I knew what Eustace’s professional reputation was. And, knowing it, why didn’t I warn my father-in-law that he was playing with fire and could count on being badly burned? The obvious implication is either that I didn’t know about these companies, and am therefore a fool whom no man in his senses would ever employ again, or that I did know and kept my mouth shut for reasons of my own, connected with pickings. In which case I’m a knave. No, don’t imagine you’re the only person who’s going to have a bad time. We’re practically all of us for it.”
“Do you think I did it?”
Miles said kindly, “My dear fellow, it’s no use asking me questions like that. I’m a lawyer.”
“Still, you’re not here in that capacity. You must have some private opinion.”
“Even so, I couldn’t answer such a question. There are codes of behaviour in all classes and callings. Think for yourself of the psychological effect of my telling a man in a highly nervous state and a dangerous position that I consider he’s a murderer. Immediately the balance would swing down, and, though you might know yourself as innocent as the archangel Gabriel, your position would be weakened. Of course, if you were proposing a confession of the crime, that would be different. But I gather you’re not.”
Brand agreed. “I’m not. Though not for want of encouragement. Richard did all he could to persuade me.” But despite the lightness of the tone his expression was so heavy with melancholy that Miles was moved with compassion. He was aware that the family on the whole had accepted without question the theory of Brand’s guilt, and the effect of so general a belief on the atmosphere in which the man moved must be to depress and to dishearten. He went on, “It isn’t a desire to intrude on your affairs that makes me say this, but as a lawyer one sees so many false steps taken that a word in season would have prevented. If they can’t prove that Eustace or anyone else was in the library after you admit to being there, you will, all things considered, be in a very awkward position. I don’t know, of course, what took place at the interview, but my advice—and I give this to every client I have—is to stick to the bare facts. Don’t, if it was a bit stormy, pretend it was plain sailing. And if you had, practically speaking, to wrench the money out of your father’s hands, say so. You’ll create a much better impression, and though, of course, men do have second thoughts, these don’t obliterate the first ones. If they think they’ve caught you tripping once, they’ll take everything else you say with a grain of salt.”
Behind them they heard Amy say to Eustace, “I wish you would be frank with us. We have all guessed that things were not going so well as he had hoped. My father admitted as much, so I don’t think there’s any need for secrecy among ourselves, at all events. Perhaps he asked you to keep that final conversation private, but then he couldn’t have foreseen this position. And, whatever it was, I do think you owe it to us to tell us anything that may bear on the case.” She observed him with a piercing gravity, but he only said with added emphasis, “I assure you, Amy, I saw nothing of your father after he went to the library, when we had finished bridge. Certainly there were some points I was anxious to discuss with him, such as the advisability of making one or two changes in his investments, new developments that have only just occurred, but I had not intended to trouble him before to-morrow. A man, when he has his family round him, doesn’t want to be plagued by business details.”
Even the solemn Miles grinned at that. Brand laughed too, and Amy, who believed in describing a spade accurately, remarked in forceful tones, “It was when my father had his family round him that he was perpetually plagued by business details.”
Eustace said furiously, “That may account for his persistent letters to me, asking for larger dividends, greater scope for his capital. If you suppose, my dear Amy, that acting for one’s father-in-law is a joke or a sinecure, let me disabuse you. I wouldn’t have stood so much interference and complaint from any other man, but one tries to make all the allowances possible, and I knew he was being pestered by his family.”
Olivia burst into a flood of tears. “Oh, this is the most horrible Christmas Day I ever remember,” she wailed, quite unmoved by any sense of the enveloping tragedy. So she would sob if the turkey failed to arrive or the pudding were burnt.
Eustace, torn between irritation at her collapse and relief at an opportunity for escaping his sister-in-law’s grilling examination of his motives and actions, took her away.
“She was always like that,” said Amy carelessly. “She cried for hours when she was a little girl, just to attract attention.”
Many of Eustace’s thoughts, passing and repassing in his mind, were as clear to Miles as though
