“It may be in here or in the bedroom,” said Miss Booth. “I’ll get her keys.”
She opened a door on the right. Miss Climpson, endlessly inquisitive, tiptoed in after her.
The bedroom was even more of a nightmare than the sitting room. A small electric reading lamp burned dimly by the bed, huge and gilded, with hangings of rose brocade cascading in long folds from a tester supported by fat golden cupids. Outside the narrow circle of light loomed monstrous wardrobes, more cabinets, tall chests of drawers. The dressing table, frilled and flounced, held a wide, threefold mirror, and a monstrous cheval glass in the centre of the room darkly reflected the towering and shadowy outlines of the furniture.
Miss Booth opened the middle door of the largest wardrobe. It swung back with a creak, letting out a great gush of frangipani. Nothing, evidently, had been altered in this room since silence and paralysis had struck the owner down.
Miss Climpson stepped softly up to the bed. Instinct made her move cautiously as a cat, though it was evident that nothing would ever startle or surprise its occupant.
An old, old face, so tiny in the vast expanse of sheet and pillow that it might have been a doll, stared up at her with unblinking, unseeing eyes. It was covered with fine surface wrinkles, like a hand sodden with soapy water, but all the great lines carved by experience had been smoothed out and crumpled. It reminded Miss Climpson of a child’s pink balloon, from which nearly all the air has leaked away. The escaping breath puffed through the lax lips in little blowing, snorting sounds and added to the resemblance. From under the frilled nightcap straggled a few lank wisps of whitened hair.
“Funny, isn’t it,” said Miss Booth, “to think that with her lying like that, her spirit can communicate with us.”
Miss Climpson was overcome by a sense of sacrilege. It was only by a great effort that she prevented herself from confessing the truth. She had pulled the garter with the soapbox above her knee for safety, and the elastic was cutting painfully into the muscles of her leg—a kind of reminder of her iniquities.
But Miss Booth had already turned away, and was pulling open the drawers of one of the bureaux.
Two hours passed, and they were still searching. The letter B opened up a particularly wide field of search. Miss Climpson had chosen it on that account, and her foresight was rewarded. By a little ingenuity, that useful letter could be twisted to fit practically any hiding place in the house. The things that were neither bureaux, beds, bags, boxes, baskets nor bibelot tables could usually be described as big, black, brown or buhl or, at a pinch, as being bedroom or boudoir furniture, and since every shelf, drawer and pigeonhole in every object was crammed full of newspaper cuttings, letters and assorted souvenirs, the searchers soon found their heads, legs and backs aching with effort.
“I’d no idea,” said Miss Booth, “that there could be so many possible places.”
Miss Climpson, sitting on the floor, with her back hair uncoiling itself and her decent black petticoats tucked up nearly to the soapbox, agreed wearily.
“It’s dreadfully exhausting, isn’t it?” said Miss Booth. “Wouldn’t you like to stop? I can go on searching tomorrow by myself. It’s a shame to tire you out in this way.”
Miss Climpson turned this over in her mind. If the will were found in her absence and sent to Norman Urquhart, would Miss Murchison be able to get hold of it before it was again hidden away or destroyed? She wondered.
Hidden away, not destroyed. The mere fact that the will had been sent to him by Miss Booth would prevent the solicitor from making away with it, for there would be a witness to its existence. But he might successfully conceal it for a considerable time—and time was of the essence of the adventure.
“Oh, I’m not a scrap tired,” she said brightly, sitting up on her heels and restoring her coiffure to something more like its usual neatness. She had a black notebook in her hand, taken from a drawer in one of the Japanese cabinets, and was turning its pages mechanically. A line of figures caught her eye: 12, 18, 4, 0, 9, 3, 15, and she wondered vaguely what they referred to.
“We’ve looked through everything here,” said Miss Booth. “I don’t believe we’ve missed anything—unless, of course, there is a secret drawer somewhere.”
“Could it be in a book, do you think?”
“A book! Why, of course it might. How silly of us not to think of that! In detective stories, wills are always hidden in books.”
“More often than in real life,” thought Miss Climpson, but she got up and dusted herself and said cheerfully:
“So they are. Are there many books in the house?”
“Thousands,” said Miss Booth. “Downstairs in the library.”
“I shouldn’t have expected Mrs. Wrayburn to be a great reader, somehow.”
“Oh, I don’t think she was. The books were bought with the house, so Mr. Urquhart told me. They’re nearly all old ones, you know—big things bound in leather. Dreadfully dull. I’ve never found a thing to read there. But they’re just the sort of books to hide wills in.”
They emerged into the corridor.
“By the way,” said Miss Climpson, “won’t the servants think it funny of us to be wandering about the place so late?”
“They all sleep in the other wing. Besides, they know that I sometimes have visitors. Mrs. Craig has often been here as late as this when we have had interesting sittings. There’s a spare bedroom where I can put people up when I want to.”
Miss Climpson
