The Ivory Dagger (15 page)

‘Ah! You think you’ve got me there, but you haven’t. I went home for my magnifying-glass, and for a letter. Meant to bring them with me, but found I hadn’t got them. That’s my housekeeper—she’s always taking things out of my pockets. She says they’d burst if she didn’t. The letter was from Robinet. He’s the greatest living expert on ivories, and he knew all about this precious ivory dagger. Between us I thought we could bring Whitall down a peg or two, and so we did. I knew he sat up late, so I came round to this door.’

Frank balanced the pencil in his hand.

‘And he let you in?’

The Professor thumped the arm of his chair.

‘No. The door was unlocked.’

‘What!’

Professor Richardson nodded.

‘I just tried the handle—I was going to rattle it to attract his attention, you know—but it was open, so I walked in. Gave him a bit of a start.’ He grinned like a schoolboy.

Frank Abbott’s eyes had become intent.

‘Well, you came in. Was he surprised to see you?’

‘I don’t know whether he was or not. I said, “Look here, Whitall, if that ivory daggers of yours is a day older than late seventeenth century, I’ll eat it. Fetch it along, and I’ll prove what I say, or Robinet shall prove it for you.” So he fetched it along, and I did prove it, though he was much too self-opinionated an ass to admit it in so many words.’

‘And then?’

The Professor stared.

‘I went along home.’

‘Which way did you go out?’

‘The same way I came in.’

‘Why?’

‘Pah! Why does one do anything? It was the nearest way.’

‘It gave you a long dark walk round the house.’

‘And I have an excellent pocket torch. Look here, where is this getting us?’

Abbott said coolly,

‘I just wondered whether it was because you didn’t want to be seen. You wouldn’t, would you, if Whitall was dead when you left him?’

The Professor thumped with both hands.

‘Well then, he wasn’t, and that’s that! He was sitting where you are now with the dagger in front of him on the blotting-pad, looking about as sweet as verjuice. I went out, and before I got down the steps he was after me, locking the door in case I took it into my head to come back.’

‘He locked the door after you?’

The Professor gave one of his great roars of laughter.

‘Jammed down the bolt! Couldn’t do it fast enough! Afraid I’d come back and refute him some more!’

There was a pause. Then Abbott said,

‘Do you know that Waring found that door ajar at a little after twelve?’

The Professor stared.

‘Then someone must have opened it.’

‘Or left it open. If Herbert Whitall was dead when you left him, there would be no one to fasten the door after you—would there?’

The Professor grinned.

‘Very subtle, young man. What do you expect me to say? He was alive when I left him, and he locked the door behind me. So you can put that in your statement, and I’ll sign it!’

When the Professor had made his statement and signed it, which he did with a fine zigzag of a Z and a ‘Richardson’ of which the capital letter was the only one which could be identified with any certainty, he threw down the pen and inquired whether the police were going to make fools of themselves by arresting him.

‘Don’t mind me, if you want to be a laughing-stock! Get on with it!’

‘And you will write to The Times about it? Well, I don’t think we’ll oblige you today, but you must understand that you will be called at the inquest, and that you should be available for further questioning.’

The Professor gave his booming laugh.

‘I shan’t do a bolt, if that’s what you mean!’

Miss Silver had been knitting thoughtfully. When Professor Richardson had banged the door behind him Frank Abbott strolled over to her and said,

‘Well?’

She coughed mildly.

‘An interesting character,’ she observed.

He sat down on the arm of the opposite chair.

‘Oh, quite.’

‘In some ways so extremely uncontrolled, and yet capable of meeting a really alarming situation with considerable coolness. His argument, produced on the spur of the moment and after a really remarkable exhibition of anger, was, under the mannerisms with which it was presented, both adroit and cool.’

Frank nodded.

‘He has got a brain all right.’

‘A very good one, I should say.’

He laughed.

‘But you haven’t really answered my question. What did you think of that cool, adroit argument of his? Did you find it convincing?’

‘I am inclined to be convinced by it.’

‘Would you like to give me your reasons?’

Her busy hands rested for a moment. She looked at him in a very earnest manner and said,

‘It is a question of motive. I cannot see why Professor Richardson should have desired Sir Herbert Whitall’s death. There may, of course, be things that we do not know, but on the face of it the Professor had every reason to be pleased with the result of the interview which had just taken place. You can, of course, confirm his account of it by asking to see the letter from M. Robinet which, he declares, enabled him to confute Sir Herbert. Having had the best of that argument, why should he proceed to violence? He would be much more likely to have arrived at a state of high good humour, no doubt very offensive to Sir Herbert Whitall but in no way calculated to produce a murderous impulse. There is also the fact that he apparently made no attempt to keep his voice down during the interview. The hour was not very late. It was only eleven o’clock. Anyone might have been passing along the passage. Marsham did in fact pass, and heard both his voice and Sir Herbert’s.’

‘Oh, I did not suppose that he came here intending to murder Sir Herbert.’

‘What provocation could he have received sufficient to carry him to such an extreme?’

Frank raised an eyebrow.

‘Does that temper of his require any extreme provocation?’

Miss Silver said in her most thoughtful voice,

‘In small things, no. There is a great deal of surface disturbance, as we saw. He blustered and raged, but at a moment’s notice control was resumed—if indeed it had ever really been lost. To use his own argument, if he has never assaulted anyone before, why should he now murder Sir Herbert Whitall?’

‘In other words, you don’t think he did it.’

‘I can see no reason why he should have done so.’

As she spoke, the telephone bell rang. Frank went over to it, picked up the receiver, and said, ‘Hullo?’ Then his voice changed.

‘That you, Jackson? Well, what have you got?’

There was a pause whilst a murmuring noise came from the instrument. After an interval Frank said,

‘Forty thousand?’ And after another, ‘Isn’t that the old boy who had his picture in the papers with a hundred and one candles round a three-tiered cake?… I see… All right. Thanks.’

He hung up and came back to his chair.

‘Well, there seem to be some signs of a rat down the hole you were interested in.’

‘My dear Frank!’

‘The Dryden hole. I put a ferret down, and he’s just come up to report.’

Her glance held an indulgent reproof.

‘I imagine you to mean that you have had some inquiries made with regard to Sir John Dryden’s will.’

‘Right, as always! The excellent Jackson has been to Somerset House, and reports that Sir John left forty thousand in Government stock in trust to his adopted daughter Lila.’

‘And the trustees?’

‘Two of them—his wife Sybil Dryden, and Sir Gregory Digges.’

This name, together with Frank Abbott’s part in the telephone conversation, brought instant illumination to Miss Silver’s mind. She took two newspapers, one world-famous for its moderate views and impeccable taste, the other of a livelier cast and given to pictorial illustration. Like Frank, she immediately recalled the photograph of Sir Gregory Digges on his hundred-and-first birthday surrounded by descendants, all apparently in rapt contemplation of an enormous cake with candles on every tier.

Frank laughed.

‘I see the name touches a chord. Well, there you are. The will was made getting on for twenty years ago, and I suppose Sir John wanted to pay the old boy a compliment. You know how it is with trustees—one of them does the work, and the others sign on the dotted line, Sir John obviously expected his wife to be the one who did the work. I begin to wonder how she did it.’

Miss Silver was knitting again. She said in a reminiscent voice,

‘Nineteen years ago…Miss Lila was then about three, and Sir John was not married to Lady Dryden.’

‘Sure about that?’

‘Oh, quite. I fear I cannot give you the date of the marriage, but it was some years subsequent to the adoption.’

‘Then her name must have been added later. It would be quite a natural thing to do. Jackson didn’t go into details.’ Miss Silver coughed.

‘Lady Dryden certainly gave me to understand that Sir John had been able to do very little for his adopted daughter.’

‘Query—are her ideas so large that she regards forty thousand as chicken-feed? Or what? I wonder whether the late Herbert had had a look at Sir John Dryden’s will same as Jackson. If he was marrying the lovely Lila he would take an intelligent interest in that forty thousand. But Lady Dryden says there was very little for Lila. How come? Herbert may have wanted to know that and a good deal more. He may have developed an inconvenient curiosity—even a menacing one. If the forty thousand was no longer there, it might be very awkward indeed for Lady Dryden. It would, in fact, explain why Lila mustn’t marry Bill, and must marry Herbert though she quite obviously regarded him as poison.’ He glanced at his wrist-watch and got up. ‘Well, having given free rein to our imaginations and hung a great deal of fancy on a very small peg of fact, we had better come back to solid earth. From which mixed metaphors you may pick out any one you like and keep it with the assurances of my most profound esteem—an expression translated from the French. I’m going to try it on the Chief one day and watch him blow up. For the moment, if his train wasn’t late Mr. Garside, Whitall’s solicitor, should be turning in at the drive. We are about to stage the great will scene and watch everyone’s reactions. You are specially invited to attend.’

Miss Silver gathered up her pink ball, her knitting-bag, and little Josephine’s vest. She smiled and said sedately,

‘Thank you. It will be a most interesting experience.’

Mr. Garside was a thin, hatchet-faced man with a stoop and a deep lugubrious voice. He was very much shocked at his client’s violent end, and at being, as it were, precipitated into the middle of a murder case. Such a thing had never happened to the firm before. Not in the three generations during which his family had been connected with it. Disapproval enveloped him like a mantle. He sat at the writing-table in the study, opened the small attaché case which he had brought with him, took out some papers, and looked down the room at the assembled company. To his right was Inspector Abbott of Scotland Yard with the local Inspector who had met him at the station. He considered that Inspector Abbott looked a good deal too young for the job, and that he would in all probability be inclined to give himself airs. He disliked him, he disliked his errand. The whole affair was, in fact, extremely distasteful. He directed his attention to the family.

Mr. Haile—he knew a good deal about Mr. Eric Haile. Sir Herbert had been quite outspoken about him on more than one occasion. Lady Dryden—handsome woman, looked very well in her black. The secretary, Miss Whitaker—there wasn’t much he didn’t know about her—looked shockingly ill. Miss Dryden now, who had lost her bridegroom only a few days before the wedding, she didn’t look half so bad. Delicate of course and nervous, but that was only natural. A lovely creature. Ah well, there was many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip. She sat on the sofa in a plain black dress high to the neck and long to the wrist, Mr. Adrian Grey on one side of her and a little woman who looked like a governess on the other. He had heard her name, but for the moment it eluded him. Silver—yes, that was it—Miss Silver. Just what she was doing here, he could not imagine, and no one had taken the trouble to inform him. She had a flowered knitting-bag on her lap. He trusted she was not going to knit. Had he but known it, her sense of decorum, quite as great as his own, would have been equally affronted by the production of little Josephine’s pink vest.

Inspector Abbott had also been contemplating the group about the hearth—Mr. Haile leaning against the mantelpiece, a suitable shade of gravity upon his handsome features—Lady Dryden in one of the big chairs—Miss Whitaker, as became her position, in a smaller one. Well, there they were—all the suspects, except Bill Waring and the Professor. He turned to the solicitor with a nod, and Mr. Garside picked up one of the papers he had taken from his case, cleared his throat, and addressed an expectant audience.

‘I have been asked to make a communication to you on the subject of the late Sir Herbert Whitall’s will. Since the two executors are present, Mr. Haile and myself, I will now proceed to do so. I do not know whether Mr. Haile is acquainted with the terms of the will—’

As he paused upon this, Eric Haile said,

‘My cousin told me that he was putting me in as an executor, but that was some years ago. Beyond that I know nothing. He was not a very communicative person. I supposed that as he was going to be married he would be making a new will. May I ask whether you are now talking of the old will or of a new one?’

There was a pause. No one could fail to be aware that the question and its answer were momentous. If the new will had been signed, Lila Dryden would be an heiress. If the old will were still valid, she would not get a penny. And who benefited then—the cousin, the secretary, or some person or persons unknown? Anything was possible, and when Mr. Garside opened his dry lips the secret would be out. He opened them now.

‘Sir Herbert was in the process of giving me instructions with regard to a new will, but he deferred a final decision as to some of its terms. He intended to make that decision over the weekend, and to sign the will on Wednesday, the day before his marriage. I do not know whether he had indeed come to a final decision, or what that decision would have been. It is immaterial, since the will remained unsigned. It is therefore the old will which is operative, and under that will, as I have said, you and I, Mr. Haile, are named as executors.’

Lady Dryden took the blow with courage. She lost some colour. It became apparent that what remained was the result of art, not nature. The hand which lay upon the arm of her chair tightened a little. Her eyes rested steadily upon the solicitor’s face. Miss Whitaker in the small chair beside her drew a long, deep breath. Her hands relaxed the hold in which they had been clenched. There was no change at all in Lila Dryden’s rather bewildered gaze. Eric Haile nodded and said,

‘Well, let’s get on with it. What are the terms of the will?’

Before Mr. Garside could speak Inspector Abbott said,

‘Are you sure you don’t know?’

He got a frank stare of surprise.

‘I have said I don’t.’

‘You have no idea whether you are a beneficiary?’

There was a slight shrug of the shoulders.

‘One hopes of course. I’m about the only relation he had.’

If it was acting it was very good acting indeed. No protestations, no assumption of disinterest, no pretence of anything beyond a decent gravity and regret.

At a look from Abbott, Garside began.

‘I do not propose to read the will in extenso—not at the moment. I shall, of course, hand Mr. Haile the copy to which as an executor he is entitled. If he would like to have it now—’

He paused in an interrogative manner.

Eric Haile waved the suggestion away.

‘No, no—later on will do. I don’t suppose any of us are very much up in legal jargon. I don’t know why you have to wrap things up so.’

The lugubrious voice took on a hint of reproof.

‘Where precision is indispensable words have often to be employed in a sense which is unfamiliar to the layman. I will therefore summarize the main bequests. They are as follows—’

There was another pause whilst he settled his pince-nez. It was not of any considerable duration, but it weighed heavily upon everybody present. Mr. Garside cleared his throat, held the paper from which he was about to read a little farther away from him, and announced,

‘I will begin with the smaller legacies. Ten named charities will receive five hundred pounds apiece. These bequests will be free of legacy duty, as will also the bequest of ten pounds for each year of service to all members of his domestic staff.’

It was at this moment that Miss Whitaker leaned forward, and that Lila Dryden turned her bewildered gaze upon Adrian Grey. If she had said, ‘What does it mean—what has it got to do with me?’ the implication could not have been plainer. Herbert Whitall was dead—she didn’t have to marry him after all. Then why did she have to listen whilst a lawyer read things out of his will?

Adrian put his hand over hers for a moment, and then took it away again. She wished that he had left it there. Something inside her had begun to shake. Her faint lovely colour came and went.

Mr. Garside pushed his pince-nez up on the right-hand side and continued.

‘There is a bequest of five thousand pounds to Mr. Adrian Grey.’ Mr. Garside looked over the top of his glasses and explained. ‘This bequest is contained in a codicil added recently, but I include it, for convenience sake, amongst the legacies in the body of the will. There is also in this codicil a legacy of five thousand pounds and his collection of ivories to the South Kensington Museum.’ He paused here to clear his throat and cough.

Adrian Grey had flushed. He looked up as if he were about to speak, did in fact murmur something which nobody heard, and then stopped. The flush faded slowly from his face.

Mr. Garside said in his most funereal tones,

‘The residue of the estate, together with any house property in his possession at the time of his death, to his cousin Mr. Henry Eric Haile.’

Eric Haile stood where he was, and everyone looked at him. Or nearly everyone. Even Lila Dryden turned those large blue eyes of hers in his direction. The only person in the room who continued to look fixedly at Mr. Garside was Miss Whittaker. Her gaze was so intent, so expectant, that it actually affected him with a feeling of discomfort. He doubled over the sheet of paper from which he had been reading and dropped it upon the blotting-pad.

Eric Haile straightened himself. His colour had risen a little, as well it might. The man who can hear unmoved that he has inherited a large fortune is either a saint or a person devoid of ordinary human feelings. The rise in colour and the brightening of the eyes showed that he was by no means unmoved, but nobody could say that he did not bear himself with dignity and good feeling. He said, the words hurrying a little,

‘I didn’t expect anything like that. It’s very good of him. I thought there might be a legacy, but not anything like this.’

Sincerely, or acting? Frank Abbott had been brought up on the immortal works of Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Alice through the Looking-Glass. A chance phrase from the Hatter’s tea-party slipped into his mind and out again: ‘It was the best butter.’

Mr. Garside, again adjusting his pince-nez, was engaged in speculating as to whether Mr. Haile had any idea of just how lucky he was. If Sir Herbert Whitall had lived four days longer, there might not have been even a ten pound legacy for his next of kin. He wondered if Mr. Haile suspected by what a very narrow margin he had become an exceedingly wealthy man.

It may be said that the two police officers were concerned with the same question. Their scrutiny of Mr. Haile failed to provide them with an answer.

Mr. Garside was putting his papers away in the attaché case.

‘Perhaps, Mr. Haile, we could have a talk—’ He paused, glanced about him, and added the word, ‘elsewhere’.

All this while Miss Whitaker had remained leaning forward and staring at him. The last vestige of colour had left her face. Except for the unnatural brilliance of the eyes it had a dead look. As he pushed back his chair preparatory to rising, she spoke with stiff lips.

‘That isn’t all.’

‘Well, yes, Miss Whitaker.’

‘It can’t be! There must be something for me. He told me there was.’

There might have been no one else in the room. Intensity of feeling isolates. It was present in her voice as she reiterated,

‘He told me—he told me—’

Mr. Garside said,

‘I am afraid—you may have misunderstood. You have, I believe, been Sir Herbert’s secretary for some years.’

‘Ten.’ The word rang like a tolling bell.

The solicitor cleared his throat.

‘You will, of course, receive ten pounds for each of those years—a hundred pounds. That would be, I suppose, the legacy to which Sir Herbert alluded.’

She said in a low, shocked voice,

‘A hundred pounds!’

And then suddenly she was on her feet and screaming.

‘A hundred pounds! Is that what you call a legacy? I misunderstood, did I? A hundred pounds! He told me he was providing for me, and for the child! He told me I was down in his will for ten thousand! Why else do you suppose I stayed on when I knew he was going to marry that girl? Do you suppose I wanted to? Do you suppose any woman would want to? I was doing it because I’d got to—that’s why! Because he was making a new will—because I was down for ten thousand in the old one—and because he said he’d cut me out of the new will and never leave me a penny! So I would have had to stay and watch him putting her upon a pedestal and calling her his ivory goddess and getting a kick out of seeing how much I hated it—and him—and her!’ Her voice broke and came down on a level menacing note. ‘And her! The fool—the little fool! What about her now? Aren’t you going to arrest her? She was there with his blood on her hand, wasn’t she? Wasn’t she—wasn’t she? Why don’t you arrest her?’

On the last words she stopped. A shudder went over her. She put out her hands in a groping gesture and went down in a heap on the floor.