“It’s quite true,” said Eames as they left the house, “that we never noticed any signs of depression or anxiety in Mottram. But I do remember, only a short time ago, his seeming rather excited one evening when he was round with us. Or am I imagining it? Memory and imagination are such close neighbours. But I do think that when he asked the Bishop to go and stay down at Chilthorpe he seemed unnaturally insistent about it. He was fond of the Bishop, of course, but I shouldn’t have thought he was as fond of him as all that. To hear him talk, you would think that it was going to make all the difference to him whether the Bishop shared his holiday or not.”
“Yes, I wonder what that points to?”
“Anything or nothing. It’s possible, of course, that he was feeling depressed, as he well might be; and thought that he wanted more than Brinkman’s company to help him over a bad time. Or—I don’t know. He was always secretive. He gave the Bishop a car, you know; and took endless pains to find out beforehand what sort of car would be useful to him, without ever giving away what he was doing till the last moment. And the other evening—well, I feel now as if I’d felt then that he had something up his sleeve. But did I really feel it then? I don’t know.”
“On the whole, though, you incline to the suicide theory?”
“I didn’t say that. It’s possible, isn’t it, that a man who had some premonition of a violent end might want company when he went to a lonely place like Chilthorpe?”
“Had he any enemies, do you think, in Pullford?”
“Who hasn’t? But not that sort of enemies. He used, I fancy, to be something of a martinet with his work-people, in the old manner. In America, a disgruntled employee sometimes satisfies his vendetta with a shotgun. But in England we have no murdering classes. Even the burglars, I am told, make a principle of going unarmed, for fear they might be tempted to shoot. You would probably find two or three hundred men in Pullford who would grouse at Mottram’s success and call him a bloodsucker, but not one who would up with a piece of lead piping if he met him in a lonely lane.”
“I say, it’s been very kind of you looking after me like this. I wish, if you’ve any time to spare in the next day or two, you would drop down to Chilthorpe and help me to make the case out. Or is that asking too much?”
“Not the least. The Bishop goes off to a confirmation tomorrow and I shall probably have time on my hands. If you think I could be of any use, I’ll certainly look in. I like Chilthorpe; every prospect pleases and only the chops are vile. No, I won’t come in, thanks; I ought to be getting back now.”
Angela was a little inclined to be satirical at her husband’s prolonged absence; but she seemed to have killed the time with some success. She had not even been reduced to going round the early Perp. church. They made short work of the way back to Chilthorpe, and found Leyland eagerly awaiting them at the door of the hotel.
“Well,” he asked, “have you found out anything about Mottram?”
“Not much, and that’s a fact. Except that a man who strikes me as a competent observer thought he had noticed a certain amount of excitement in Mottram’s manner last week, as if he had been more than ordinarily anxious to get the Bishop to stay with him. That, and the impression made on the same observer that he was keeping dark about something—had something up his sleeve. I have seen the house; it is a beastly place; and it has electric light laid on, of course. I have seen the housekeeper, an entirely harmless woman, partly Irish by extraction, who has nothing to add to what we know, and does not believe that Mottram habitually employed any of the Pullford doctors.”
“Well, and what about the Bishop?”
“Exactly, what about him? I find his atmosphere very difficult to convey. He was very nice to me and very hospitable; he has not the overpowering manners of a great man, and yet his dignities seem to sit on him quite easily. He is entirely natural, and I am prepared to go bail for his being an honest man.”
“That,” said Leyland, “is just as well.”
“How do you mean? Have you had the answer to your telegram?”
“I have, and a very full answer it is. The solicitors gave all the facts without a murmur. About fifteen years ago Mottram made a will which was chiefly in favour of his nephew. A few years later he cancelled that will absolutely and made another will in which he devised his property to certain public purposes—stinkingly useless ones, as is the way of these very rich men. I can’t remember it all; but he wants his house to be turned into a silly sort of museum, and he provides for the erection of a municipal art gallery—that sort of thing. But this is the important point: His Euthanasia policy was not mentioned at all in the later will. Three weeks ago he put in a codicil directing how the money he expects from the Indescribable is to be disposed of.”
“Namely how?”
“The entire half-million goes to the Bishop of Pullford to be administered by him for the benefit of his diocese as he and his successors shall think fit!”
X
The Bet Doubled
There was no time to discuss the implications of this unexpected announcement, for the inquest was just beginning, and neither Leyland nor Bredon could afford to miss it. There was a decayed outbuilding which adjoined the Load of Mischief, the scene, you fancied, of the farmers’ ordinary in
