THE CRIME AT TATTENHAM CORNER (Murder Mystery Classic). Annie Haynes
he never forgave my husband for objecting to the marriage. So that was why we did not see so much of him as we otherwise should."
"Thank you, Lady Burslem." The inspector took his elbow off the mantelpiece and straightened himself. "Just one thing more—could you give me the name of Sir John's dentist?"
Sophie bit her lip. "No, really I couldn't. I have never had anything to do with dentists, but Ellerby would know." She rang the bell as she spoke and ordered the valet to come to them.
He did not keep them waiting.
"Ellerby—" she began at once.
The inspector stopped her.
"If you please, Lady Burslem."
He put the question to Ellerby.
Ellerby frowned. "I am sure I couldn't; Sir John never went to one here that I heard of. He went to one when he was over in the States, but I don't know where. He told me American dentists could knock spots off the English ones. It is all I know, inspector."
"Thank you. Then that is all this morning and I hope I may not need to trouble you again," turning back to Lady Burslem.
"Thank you, inspector!" Lady Burslem did not raise her eyes. Was it possible that he had not seen the terror in them? she asked herself.
Harbord followed his superior out of the house. Outside the crowd had increased. It needed all the efforts of the police to keep it moving. Stoddart gave a few sharp orders to a man in plain clothes; then he and Harbord got into the run-about in silence. When they were clear of the traffic and had got into a quiet street, Stoddart glanced at Harbord.
"What do you think of her ladyship?"
Harbord fenced. "What do you?"
The inspector did not look at him. "A pretty woman, a very pretty woman. For the rest, I shall be able to tell you more about her when I have seen the paper that Sir John signed that last night, and that Mr. Weldon holds."
Chapter IV
"I rang Sir Charles Stanyard up an hour ago, but he is not in town."
Inspector Stoddart was the speaker. He had been out for some time and had just returned. He was sitting before his desk in his room at Scotland Yard, and as he looked up at Harbord his expression was worried, troubled.
Harbord had also been out since early morning, pursuing a different line of investigation. He carried a small brown parcel, which he laid upon the inspector's desk. Stoddart did not take it up. Instead he sat back in his chair and drummed absently on the open flap of his desk as he looked up at Harbord.
"This case does not get any easier, Alfred."
"It does not, sir," his subordinate agreed with emphasis.
"I have just come from the lawyers, Weldon & Furnival of Spencer's Inn," Stoddart went on almost as if he were talking to himself, his eyes not looking at Harbord now, but staring straight in front of him at a map of Old London pasted on the wall opposite.
Harbord waited.
"Weldon & Furnival were Sir John's lawyers," Stoddart continued. "Weldon transacted most of the business. I went to get the paper Lady Burslem said Sir John signed when they came home, which he told her to take care of and which she had given to Mr. Weldon. Well, I had some trouble in persuading Mr. Weldon even to let me see it. He utterly declined to let me bring it away."
"But could he refuse?" Harbord questioned doubtfully.
"Not ultimately, of course. Still, he can put a good many difficulties in our way, as he did. But the point of the whole matter is this"—the inspector paused a moment, and then went on impressively—"that paper was a short will, drawn up apparently in Sir John's own handwriting, leaving everything of which he died possessed to his wife, appointing her sole executor and residuary legatee. His daughter—his only child—is not even mentioned."
"What an extraordinary thing!" Harbord exclaimed. "Why on earth should he make a new will at that time of night? Did he know he was in some danger?"
Stoddart nodded. "Exactly the questions I have been putting to myself, but I can find no answer to them. More especially as he had already made one will since his marriage with Miss Carlford. This former one was drawn up by Mr. Weldon. It left Lady Burslem and his daughter well provided for, but the bulk of his fortune was to be held in trust for any son that might be born to him. Only in the case of his second marriage, like his first, failing to provide him with an heir, was his property to be divided equally between Lady Burslem and his daughter Pamela and any other daughters he might have. It appears to be, on the face of it, a far more satisfactory arrangement, and the questions one cannot help asking oneself are: Why did he want to make a hurried fresh will in that last moment? And had he any reason to suppose that it was his last moment?"
"Could it have been a duel?" Harbord said in a puzzled tone.
"Hardly!" The inspector laughed satirically. "The duellist does not throw his dead opponent in a ditch and go off with his car. Besides, who would fight a duel in these days?
"I don't know," Harbord said in a befogged tone. Then, brightening up, "I beg your pardon, sir. Of course it was an idiotic suggestion. But this case so bristles with impossibilities that goodness knows what we shall come to before we have finished with it."
"I hope at any rate we shall keep our heads," the inspector said dryly. "This last will is witnessed by James, the second footman, and Ellerby, Sir John's man."
"It is a queer affair altogether," Harbord concluded, "and I'm afraid a little discovery I made down at Hughlin's Wood this morning will not throw any additional light on the matter."
The inspector pricked up his ears. "Discovery! What was it?"
"Well, I proceeded on the lines you suggested," Harbord went on, "and I have found a man who saw two cars, both two-seaters, coming from Oxley at a great pace towards Hughlin's Wood. Each of them had two occupants, a man and a woman. But he did not notice numbers or anything else that would help us to identify either of them. At last I began to think he had taken something that had made him see double. Finding I could make nothing more of him, I thought I would take another look at the ditch and its surroundings. On the other side of the ditch from the road, behind one of those old trees, I found this."
He took up the parcel he had brought in and carefully unwrapping it held up the contents.
The inspector stared. "What's that?"
"One of those wretched little handbags that women carry about and are always leaving behind them," Harbord explained. "And it has just got the usual rubbish they put in them, lip-stick, powder-puff, and what-not. But one thing that most of them haven't got is this."
He held out a betting slip—on it was scrawled in pencil:
"Put me a fiver on Peep o' Day, fiver each way on Perlyon."
"She wouldn't want to make bets after the race was run, would she? Particularly as Peep o' Day was scratched."
The inspector did not look impressed.
"No, but that might have been written out beforehand and forgotten."
"Of course it might," Harbord agreed with a crest-fallen air. "But nobody has had the chance to lay the bag where it was found since the murder. And the boys from the Beacon School had been playing rounders among the trees on that very afternoon of June 2nd. A couple of masters were with them, and both masters and boys agreed there was no bag there then. They say they could not have helped seeing it if there had been, as that particular tree was one of their goals."
The inspector shrugged his shoulders. "Umph! Pretty strong evidence that some woman was there on the evening or night of June 2nd. But it does not take us any further."
"No, perhaps not. But what do you make of this?"