“I had an idea there was a rich aunt somewhere.”
“Oh, no—unless you’re thinking of old Cremorna Garden. She’s a great aunt, on the mother’s side. But she hasn’t had anything to do with them for very many years.”
At this moment Lord Peter had one of those bursts of illumination which come suddenly when two unrelated facts make contact in the mind. In the excitement of hearing Parker’s news about the white paper packet, he had paid insufficient attention to Bunter’s account of the tea party with Hannah Westlock and Mrs. Pettican, but now he remembered something about an actress, with a name like “ ’Yde Park or something of that.” The readjustment made itself so smoothly and mechanically in his mind that his next question followed almost without a pause.
“Isn’t that Mrs. Wrayburn of Windle in Westmorland?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Urquhart. “I’ve just been up to see her, as a matter of fact. Of course, yes, you wrote to me there. She’s been quite childish, poor old lady, for the last five years or so. A wretched life—dragging on like that, a misery to herself and everybody else. It always seems to me a cruel thing that one may not put these poor old people out of the way, as one would a favourite animal—but the law will not let us be so merciful.”
“Yes, we’d be hauled over the coals by the N.S.P.C.A. if we let a cat linger on in misery,” said Wimsey. “Silly, isn’t it? But it’s all of a piece with the people who write to the papers about keepin’ dogs in draughty kennels and don’t give a hoot—or a penny—to stop landlords allowin’ a family of thirteen to sleep in an undrained cellar with no glass in the windows and no windows to put it in. It really makes me quite cross, sometimes, though I’m a peaceful sort of idiot as a rule. Poor old Cremorna Garden—she might be gettin’ on now, though. Surely she can’t last much longer.”
“As a matter of fact, we all thought she’d gone the other day: Her heart is giving out—she’s over ninety, poor soul, amazing vitality in some of these ancient ladies.”
“I suppose you’re about her only living relation now.”
“I suppose I am, except for an uncle of mine in Australia.” Mr. Urquhart accepted the fact of the relationship without enquiring how Wimsey came to know about it. “Not that my being there can do her any good. But I’m her man of business, too, so it’s just as well I should be on the spot when anything happens.”
“Oh, quite, quite. And being her man of business, of course you know how she has left her money.”
“Well, yes, of course. Though I don’t quite see, if you’ll forgive my saying so, what that has to do with the present problem.”
“Why, don’t you see,” said Wimsey, “it just occurred to me that Philip Boyes might have got himself into some kind of financial mess up—it happens to the best of men—and have, well, taken the short way out of it. But, if he had any expectations from Mrs. Wrayburn, and the old girl, I mean, the poor old lady, was so near shuffling off this mortal thingummy, why, then, don’t you know, he would have waited, or raised the wind on the strength of a post orbit or something or the other. You get my meaning, what?”
“Oh, I see—you are trying to make out a case for suicide. Well, I agree with you that it’s the most hopeful defense for Miss Vane’s friends to put up, and as far as that goes, I can support you. Inasmuch, that is, as Mrs. Wrayburn did not leave Philip anything. Nor, so far as I know, had he the smallest reason to suppose she would do so.”
“You’re positive of that?”
“Quite. As a matter of fact,” Mr. Urquhart hesitated, “well, I may as well tell you that he asked me about it one day, and I was obliged to tell him that he hadn’t the least chance of getting anything from her.”
“Oh—he did actually ask?”
“Well, yes, he did.”
“That’s rather a point, isn’t it? How long ago would that be?”
“Oh—about eighteen months ago, I fancy. I couldn’t be sure.”
“And as Mrs. Wrayburn is now childish, I suppose he couldn’t entertain any hope that she would ever alter the will?”
“Not the slightest.”
“No, I see. Well, I think we might make something of that. Great disappointment, of course—one would make out that he had counted a good deal upon it. Is it much, by the way?”
“Pretty fair—about seventy or eighty thousand.”
“Very sickening, to think of all that good stuff going west and not getting a look in one’s self. By the way, how about you? Don’t you get anything? I beg your pardon, fearfully inquisitive and all that, but I mean to say, considering you’ve been looking after her for years and are her only available relation so to speak, it would be a trifle thick, what?”
The solicitor frowned, and Wimsey apologised.
“I know, I know—I’ve been fearfully impudent. It’s a failing of mine. And anyhow, it’ll all be in the papers when the old lady does pop off, so I don’t know why I should be so anxious to pump you. Wash it out—I’m sorry.”
“There’s no real reason why you shouldn’t know,” said Mr. Urquhart, slowly, “though one’s professional instinct is to avoid disclosing one’s clients’ affairs. As a matter of fact, I am the legatee myself.”
“Oh?” said Wimsey, in a disappointed voice. “But in that case—that rather weakens the story, doesn’t it? I mean to say, your cousin might very well have felt, in that case, that he could look to you for—that is—of course I don’t know what your ideas might have been—”
Mr. Urquhart shook his head.
“I see what you are driving at, and it is a very natural thought. But actually, such a disposal of the money would have been directly contrary to the expressed wish of the testatrix. Even if I could legally have made
