So I have determined to put my property in Trust with you for my lifetime, so that you may have full power to handle everything according to your own discretion, without having to consult me every time. And also, though I am strong and healthy yet, I am glad to say, and have my wits quite about me, still, that happy state of things might alter at any time. I might become paralysed or feeble in my head, or want to make some foolish use of my money, as silly old women have done before now.
So will you draw up a deed of this kind and bring it to me and I will sign it. And at the same time I will give you instructions about my will.
Thanking you again for your good wishes,
Your affec. Great-Aunt,
Rosanna Wrayburn.
“Hurray!” said Miss Murchison. There was a will, then! And this Trust – that’s probably important, too.”
She read the letter again, skimmed through the clauses of the trust, taking particular notice that Norman Urquhart was named as sole Trustee, and finally made a mental note of some of the larger and more important items in the list of securities. Then she replaced the documents in their original order, relocked the box – which yielded to treatment like an angel – carried it out, replaced it, piled the other boxes above it, and was back at her machine, just as Mrs. Hodges re-entered the office.
“Just finished, Mrs. Hodges,” she called out cheerfully.
“I wondered if yer would be,” said Mrs. Hodges, “I didn’t hear the typewriter a-going.”
“I was making notes by hand,” said Miss Murchison. She crumpled together the spoiled front page of the affidavit and threw it into the waste-paper basket together with the re-type which she had begun. From her desk-drawer she produced a correctly typed first page, provided beforehand for the purpose, added it to the bundle of script, put the top copy and the required sets of flimsies into an envelope, sealed it, addressed it to Messrs. Hanson & Hanson, put on her hat and coat and went out, bidding a pleasant farewell to Mrs. Hodges at the door.
A short walk brought her to Messrs. Hansons’ office, where she delivered the affidavit through the letter box. Then with a brisk step and humming to herself, she made for the ’bus-stop at the junction of Theobald’s Road and Gray’s Inn Road.
“I think I deserve a little supper in Soho,” said Miss Murchison.
She was humming again as she walked from Cambridge Circus into Frith Street. “What is this beastly tune?” she asked herself abruptly. A little consideration reminded her that it was “Sweeping through the gates, Sweeping through the gates…”
“Bless me!” said Miss Murchison. “Going dotty, that’s what I am.”
CHAPTER XV
Lord Peter congratulated Miss Murchison and gave her a rather special lunch at Rules, where there is a particularly fine old cognac for those that appreciate such things. Indeed, Miss Murchison was a little late in returning to Mr. Urquhart’s office, and in her haste omitted to hand back the skeleton keys. But when the wine is good and the company agreeable one cannot always think of everything.
Wimsey himself, by a great act of self-control, had returned to his own flat to think, instead of bolting away to Holloway Gaol. Although it was a work of charity and necessity to keep up the spirits of the prisoner (it was in this way that he excused his almost daily visits) he could not disguise from himself that it would be even more useful and charitable to get her innocence proved. So far, he had not made much real progress.
The suicide theory had been looking very hopeful when Norman Urquhart had produced the draft of the will; but his belief in that draft had now been thoroughly undermined. There was still a faint hope of retrieving the packet of white powder from the “Nine Rings,” but as the days passed remorselessly on, that hope diminished almost to vanishing-point. It irked him to be taking no action in the matter – he wanted to rush to the Gray’s Inn Road, to cross-question, bully, bribe, ransack every person and place in and about the “Rings” but he knew that the police could do this better than he could.
Why had Norman Urquhart tried to mislead him about the will? He could so easily have refused all information. There must be some mystery about it. But if Urquhart were not, in fact, the legatee, he was playing rather a dangerous game. If the old lady died, and the will was proved, the facts would probably be published – and she might die any day.
How easy it would be, he thought, regretfully, to hasten Mrs. Wrayburn’s death a trifle. She was ninety-three and very frail. An over-dose of something – a shake – a slight shock, even – it did not do to think after that fashion. He wondered idly who lived with the old woman and looked after her…
It was the 30th. of December, and he still had no plan. The stately volumes on his shelves, rank after rank of Saint, historian, poet, philosopher, mocked his impotence. All that wisdom and all that beauty, and they could not show him how to save the woman he imperiously wanted from a sordid death by hanging. And he had thought himself rather clever at that kind of thing. The enormous and complicated imbecility of things was all round him like a trap. He ground his teeth and raged helplessly, striding about the suave, wealthy, futile room. The great Venetian mirror over the fireplace showed him his own head and shoulders. He saw a fair, foolish face, with straw-coloured hair sleeked back; a monocle clinging incongruously under a ludicrously twitching brow; a chin shaved to perfection, hairless, epicene; a rather high collar, faultlessly starched, a tie elegantly knotted and matching in colour the handkerchief which peeped coyly from the breast-pocket of an expensive Savile-Row tailored suit. He snatched up a heavy bronze from the mantelpiece – a beautiful thing, even as he snatched it, his fingers caressed the patina – and the impulse seized him to smash the mirror and smash the face – to break out into great animal howls and gestures.
Silly! One could not do that. The inherited inhibitions of twenty civilised centuries tied one hand and foot in bonds of ridicule. What if he did smash the mirror? Nothing would happen. Bunter would come in, unmoved and unsurprised, would sweep up the débris in a dustpan, would prescribe a hot bath and massage. And next day a new mirror would be ordered, because people would come in and ask questions, and civilly regret the accidental damage to the old one. And Harriet Vane would still be hanged, just the same.
Wimsey pulled himself together, called for his hat and coat, and went away in a taxi to call on Miss Climpson.
“I have a job,” he said to her, more abruptly than was his wont, “which I should like you to undertake yourself. I can’t trust anybody else.”
“How kind of you to put it like that,” said Miss Climpson.
“The trouble is, I can’t in the least tell you how to set about it. It all depends on what you find when you get there. I want you to go to Windle in Westmorland and get hold of an imbecile and paralysed old lady called Mrs. Wrayburn, who lives at a house called Appleford. I don’t know who looks after her, or how you are to get into the house. But you’ve got to do it, and you’ve got to find out where her will is kept, and, if possible, see it.”
“Dear me!” said Miss Climpson.
“And what’s worse,” said Wimsey, “you’ve only got about a week to do it in.”
“That’s a very short time,” said Miss Climpson.
“You see,” said Wimsey, “unless we can give some very good reason for delay, they’re bound to take the Vane case almost first thing next sessions. If I could persuade the lawyers for the defence that there is the least chance of securing fresh evidence, they could apply for a postponement. But at present I have nothing that could be called evidence – only the vaguest possible hunch.”