A little later, on the stairs, Mr. Tuke turned to Wray. “The old boy’s right, you know.”
“About the zombie, who was dead £.nd is alive? Perhaps you can tell us how to put our hands on him,” Wray said rather pettishly. Long experience of the Director had not inured him to the latter’s contrariness. “The fellow would stage his death in Belgium. Things are chaotic there, and whole rooms full of public records went up in smoke in the Palais de Justice. How is anyone going to trace an obscure Englishman who is said to have died nearly twenty years ago?”
“Yes, I had thought of that difficulty.”
“And the only two people here who seem to have known the truth, his son and the writer chap, are very definitely dead. If there’s anything in the story, the son must have known. He trumped up the whole thing. Even to having a paragraph in the local paper. It’s there, all right. Died at Bruges. . . . Damn it, I don’t believe it. Can you tell me why any sane man should go through all that hocus pocus, whatever he’d done?”
“Oh, yes, I can understand that,” Mr. Tuke said, and Wray looked at him in some surprise. “Talking of the son, how much did he leave? And to whom?”
“He had a few hundreds. Half went to Mile Boulanger, and half was shared among the remaining cousins.”
“Do you know when he drew up his will?”
“1939, I think. Vance has the details.”
“Well, it gives you one suggestive pointer, doesn’t it?”
“Which one?” Wray asked cautiously.
“If Dresser’s father is alive, he is in no need of money, or his son would surely have left him his savings.”
“I don’t see that that helps us much.”
“It is something to know that you are looking for a man who is probably at least comfortably off.”
“Perhaps his son had quarrelled with him. And anyway, the son never had helped him, according to his pass books.”
“Think it out, Wray. When the father went abroad, the son was still a boy. He wasn’t earning enough to have anything to spare. But everything goes to show that he was willing to do a lot for his father, even to telling elaborate lies about his death and to keeping up the hoax for nearly twenty years. Even if they did quarrel later—which is pure speculation—one would still expect him to do something in his will, if the need was there. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I prefer the simple explanation that the need was not there. Somehow the elder Dresser has made some money. Apparently he had little or nothing when he went abroad eighteen years ago. There is a family story that he had a job as a waiter. He may have made a fortune out of tips—but not, I should say, in Belgium.”
They had reached the lobby, and Wray was glancing at his watch.
“What’s this leading to?” he asked impatiently.
“To the suggestion that the elder Dresser came back to this country fairly soon, and managed to get some decent job here.”
“Damn it, Tuke, you talk about speculation! We don’t even know that the man is alive!”
“We’re pretty sure he is. I am. You are. In any case, as the old man says, you’ve got to find him, or prove that he’s dead, before you can get anywhere with this case. Fun for you. Have you thought that he might be the elderly bag of mystery at Whipstead station?”
“It occurred to me, yes. But it’s the merest supposition.”
“Going back to wills, did Raymond Shearsby and Mrs. Porteous leave anything worth having?”
“Shearsby had practically nothing. He seems to have lived from story to story. He left no will. Mrs. Porteous had a little put by. It goes to a friend, another schoolmarm. Even with the sale of her furniture and books, it will only amount to a couple of hundred or so. She pointed out in her will that her cousins always knew they would get their shares in great-grandpapa’s money, so she wasn’t leaving them anything.”
“I suppose none of the six had, or have, any other expectations?”
“None that I’ve heard of. What’s the point of all this?”
“I don’t know. I’m merely fishing round.” In his abrupt way Mr. Tuke changed the subject. “What does Vance think of Mortimer Shearsby?”
“He can’t make up his mind whether the man’s a fool, or very much the reverse and putting it on.”
“Rather my predicament. He interests me. The scientific mind is a single-track instrument. Sometimes it runs on a very narrow gauge. And of course our B.Sc. is the complete egotist—which,” Mr. Tuke added, “may or may not be significant. All murderers, for example, are egotists. One more thing, Wray . . . ”
Wray was heading for the door. “Yes?” he said over his shoulder.
“Karnes made another shrewd suggestion. He has an uncanny way of hitting an almost invisible nail on the head. He suggested that you were being led up the garden. I have had rather the same feeling myself.”
“I can’t say I’ve felt it,” Wray said.
“I expect you will. What I feel to-day, you feel to-morrow.” Wray gave his neigh of a laugh. “I like your nerve, Tuke. We can manage this case ourselves, thank you.”
“I love you, Wray,” Mr. Tuke said with a grin. “I can. always get a rise out of you. Well, it’s an interesting case,” he added, as they went out into the street. “And if there should be a
