The Ivory Dagger

CHAPTER XXX

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.