“Well, of course it’s all jam to them. Not that they mind coughing up much; but it’s the principle of the thing, you see. They don’t like to encourage suicide. By the way, can you tell me who the heirs are? What I mean is, I suppose a man doesn’t insure his life and then take it unless he makes certain who comes in for the bullion?”
“The heirs, as I was saying at supper, are local people. Actually a nephew, I believe—I didn’t want to say more at the time, because I think between ourselves that Mr. Pulteney shows rather too much curiosity. But Mottram quarrelled with this young fellow for some reason—he owns the big shop here; and I’m pretty certain he won’t be mentioned in the will.”
“Then you don’t know who the lucky fellow is?”
“Charities, I suppose. Mottram never discussed it with me. But I imagine you could find out from the solicitors, because it’s bound to be common property before long in any case.”
Bredon consulted, or affected to consult, a list of entries in his pocketbook. “Well, that’s awfully kind of you. I think that’s all I wanted to ask. Must think me a beastly interfering sort of fellow. Oh, one other thing—is your room anywhere near the one Mr. Mottram had? Would you have heard any sounds in the night, I mean, if there’d been anything going on in his room above the ordinary?”
“My room’s exactly above, and my window must have been open. If there were any suspicion of murder, I should be quite prepared to give evidence that there was nothing in the nature of a violent struggle. You see, I sleep pretty light, and that night I didn’t get to sleep till after twelve. It was seven o’clock in the morning when we found him, and the doctor seemed to think he’d been dead some hours. I heard nothing at all from downstairs.”
“Well, I’m tremendously obliged to you. Perhaps we’d better be wandering back, eh? You’re unmarried, of course, so you don’t have people fussing about you when you sit out of an evening.” In this happy vein of rather foolish good fellowship Bredon conducted his fellow guest back to the inn; and it is to be presumed that Brinkman did not feel that he had spent the evening in the company of a Napoleonic brain.
VI
An Ear at the Keyhole
On their return to their coffee room they found Mr. Pulteney in sole possession. He was solemnly filling in a crossword puzzle in a daily newspaper about three weeks old. Leyland had gone off to the bar parlour, intent on picking up the gossip of the village. Bredon excused himself and went upstairs to find that Angela was not yet thinking of bed, she had only got tired of a crossword puzzle. “Well,” she asked, “and what do you make of Mr. Brinkman?”
“I think he’s a bit deep. I think he knows just a little more about all this than he says. However, I let him talk, and did my best to make him think I was a fool.”
“That’s just what I’ve been doing with Mr. Pulteney. At least, I’ve been playing the ingénue. I thought I was going to get him to call me ‘My dear young lady’—I love that; he very nearly did once or twice.”
“Did you find him deep?”
“Not in that way. Miles, I forbid you to suspect Mr. Pulteney; he’s my favourite man. He told me that suicide generally followed, instead of preceding, the arrival of young ladies. I giggled.”
“I wish he’d drown himself. He’s one too many in this darned place. And it’s all confusing enough without him.”
“Want me to put in some Watson work?”
“If you aren’t wanting to go to bed.” Watson work meant that Angela tried to suggest new ideas to her husband under a mask of carefully assumed stupidity. “You see, I’m all for suicide. My instincts tell me that it’s suicide. I can smell it in the air.”
“I only smelt acetylene. Why suicide particularly?”
“Well, there’s the locked door. I’ve still got to see the Boots and verify Brinkman’s facts; but a door locked on the inside, with barred windows, makes nonsense of Leyland’s idea.”
“But a murderer might want to lock the door, so as to give himself time to escape.”
“Exactly; but he’d lock it on the outside. On the other hand, a locked door looks like suicide,
