“Yes. Yes. Seems to be a quiet street where you live.”
“Vinton Place—it’s a little cul-de-sac.”
“It was dark when he left? And you heard nothing? Yes. I wonder who his money goes to?”
“What the devil do you mean?” Geoffrey cried.
“Well, that’s quite a fair question,” said Reggie Fortune placidly. “If I’m actin’ for you, and if you like, I will, I look only to your interests. If I’m acting for Scotland Yard—and if it’s a hard case, they’ll call me in—I’m only concerned to get the truth out, whoever suffers.”
“And do you think I don’t want the truth?” Geoffrey cried. “What are you hinting at? Do you mean I murdered him?”
“Preserve absolute calm,” said Reggie Fortune.
“I’m not calm. What a beast I should be if I was calm. I want the thing cleared up, man. I want my father to have justice. Whether you act for me or act for the police it’s the same thing.”
“If you take it that way, I’ll act for the police, Beaver,” said Reggie placidly.
Geoffrey Charlecote stared at him. “That’s enough, thanks,” he said. “Stop the car. I won’t worry you any more, Mr. Fortune.”
“Mr. be blowed. Don’t be an ass. Beaver. It’s a bad business. Let’s make the best of it.”
“Will you stop the car?” Geoffrey said loudly, and stood up.
“Five miles from nowhere? Oh, go easy.” But Geoffrey turned and opened the door. So the car was stopped, and Geoffrey Charlecote left forlorn in his rage on the road.
Reggie Fortune lay back and sighed. “Poor beggar. I wonder. Poor beggar,” he said. And when he came back to Wimpole Street the first thing he did was to ring up the Hon. Stanley Lomas, the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department. As a consequence you behold him sitting under the French prints in the study of Mr. Lomas.
“I thought you’d be on to this, don’t you know?” Lomas said. “It’s a pretty case. Wealthy old gentleman, impecunious heirs, sudden death. That’s natural enough. But impecunious heirs don’t stab much—not in England.”
“Yes. You’re intelligent, Lomas. But you’re prejudiced. You always believe in the obvious.”
“The obvious is what happens.”
“Oh, Peter! If it did, we wouldn’t want a Criminal Investigation Department. Well, now, this is what I’ve got. Check it, please. Geoffrey quarrelled with the old man—went away, commenced artist, and married an Italian girl—at her wish tried to make it up with the old man—old man was willing, called on Geoffrey twice, and after the second visit Geoffrey found him stabbed and dead just outside.”
“That’s all right,” Lomas nodded. “An odd thing is, just before the murder the old man remade his will in favour of Geoffrey. When they quarrelled, he had a will drawn up which left everything to the nephew Herbert. Under this last will Herbert gets twenty thousand, and all the rest goes to Geoffrey. It was only signed on the morning of the murder.”
“There’s a deuce of a lot of unknown quantities in this equation,” Reggie said. “Silly, futile things facts are. This set will do for anything you please. As soon as he knew the will was in his favour, Geoffrey does the old man in. Or when he heard there was a new will cutting him out, Herbert sees red and knifes the old man. By the way, Lomas, I suppose the old boy was stabbed?”
“What? Oh, damme, don’t be clever. He was stabbed all right. The divisional surgeon and his own doctor, Newton, they both went over the body. Stabbed in the throat. We’ve got the weapon, too. Sort of stiletto or dagger.”
Reggie cocked an eye at the head of the Criminal Investigation Department. “Sounds Italian,” he murmured.
“It is Italian.”
“And Geoffrey married an Italian wife.”
“An Italian singer—a singer at cafés. That’s the kind she was. Yes, that’s the proposition.”
“Lomas, old thing, you ought to write melodramas. The diabolical Italian singer, she leapt out of the dark, she pulled a d—dagger from her stocking, and she fell upon the dear, kind old gentleman and left him weltering in his gore. Then she put the dagger down, so the gifted detective could find it, and went back to dinner.”
“It is silly, isn’t it?” Lomas grinned. “But there it is, don’t you know?”
“I don’t know,” said Reggie Fortune. “I don’t know anything. I was born of poor common-sensible parents, and this is all crazy. I suppose he really was stabbed?”
“You will harp on that. Go and look at him in the morning. Hang it, man, the family doctor and the divisional surgeon they ought to know if there’s a hole in him or not.”
“But why—why? Geoffrey—the Italian wife—they were on velvet anyway. The disappointed nephew—well, I suppose he still had his allowance while the old man lived. Do you know anything about Nephew Herbert?”
“Man about town—Society tame cat—usual vices, what? Plays a bit high. He’s nothing in particular.”
“Don’t sound like a lurking stabber,” Reggie admitted.
“People don’t do these things. That’s the trouble. Queer case.”
“I suppose the old man hadn’t a lurid past?”
Lomas shook his head. “Most respectable old bird.”
Reggie stood up and gave himself a full glass of soda water. “The extraordinary efficiency of the assassin,” he said carefully. “Lomas, old dear, observe the extraordinary efficiency of the assassin. Mr. S. Charlecote comes out of his son’s house. A few yards from the door somebody kills him so quickly, so neatly, that he don’t make one sound. And then this extraordinarily efficient assassin leaves his dagger for you to find.”
“Who says he didn’t make a sound?”
“Yes. Geoffrey and his angel wife. Yes. Only them and no one else. That’s a flaw. Little essays in the obvious by S. Lomas. Well, it’s me for the corpse, then.”
And so in
