The Benevent Treasure

Chapter Forty-three

Miss silver had rather a touching interview with Mr. Puncheon. She was hardly prepared for the warmth of his gratitude or the generous size of the fee which he pressed upon her acceptance.

‘It will be very good of you if you will take it,’ he said. ‘My sister is comfortably provided for, and I have no other kith or kin. If poor Alan had been different and had lived, I should have left him what I have, so it is only right that you should accept a proper reward for clearing his name. The false accusation against him killed my wife. It not only did that, but – ’ He hesitated, took off his glasses, and looked at her with moistened eyes. ‘I wonder if you will understand me when I say that it seemed to come between us. I could take no comfort in recollecting the happy times we had had together – the trouble about Alan seemed to cloud it all. But now that he is cleared, I have that comfort again. I think I told you that I was very fond of my wife. Perhaps you can understand how I feel.’

Miss Silver understood very well. She said so with great kindness.

The case of Joseph Rossi was a considerable headache for the police. Though it was extremely probable that he had murdered Miss Cara to prevent her giving the alarm and bringing Alan Thompson’s death and the whereabouts of the Treasure to light, there really was a conspicuous lack of any evidence likely to secure a verdict of guilty if he were brought before a jury. Miss Silver had heard Miss Olivia accuse him, but he had denied the accusation, and being dead she could not be called upon to substantiate it. It was remembered that she had brought a similar and quite unfounded accusation against her niece Miss Candida Sayle. The papers went to the Public Prosecutor, and they probably gave him a headache too. The whole thing smelled to heaven, but where was the evidence? Miss Cara Benevent had been found dead with her skull smashed in, and the body had certainly been moved. There was the evidence of one witness to a conversation between Miss Olivia Benevent and Joseph Rossi, according to which the moving of the body was admitted between them, but the defence would of course represent this action in quite another light than that of guilt. Confronted by a terrible emergency, an old lady and her devoted servant had taken what steps they might to preserve a long treasured family secret. It had probably never occurred to them that they were doing anything illegal. All very easy and plausible.

The iron bar, which might have supplied some evidence, was, to put it baldly, a washout. It bore traces of having been used to cause the fatal injury, but it was too deeply rusted to carry any man’s fingerprints. How it came to the place where it was found, there was nothing to show. It could have been snatched up by Joseph Rossi and used to silence a frightened woman, or it could have been in some way part of the trap which guarded the Benevento Treasure. Word went back to the county police that there was not sufficient grounds for a prosecution, and Joseph Rossi was discharged.

He walked in upon his wife Anna, who was still at the house in Retley where Miss Olivia had died. There was some good furniture there, and Mr. Tampling was paying her a wage as caretaker. She had opened the door, and he was in the hall almost before she realised that it was he.

‘You don’t seem very pleased to see me,’ he said.

She had turned very pale. She went back a step.

‘It is just – that I am – surprised.’

He went through into the kitchen and sat down.

‘Well, cook me a meal – and it had better be a good one! How much money have you got in the house?’

She stood on the other side of the table and stared at him.

‘I don’t know.’

The words were slow and reluctant. His came back quick and cold.

‘Then find out! I’m not staying here to be pointed at! I’ll take what you’ve got and be off! You can send me more later! Did Miss Olivia leave you anything?’

She would have liked to lie, but she was too much afraid. Her eyes widened in her dark, anxious face.

‘I – she -’

‘She did! How much?’

‘It was just – some money – in a parcel – ’

‘I said, “How much?” ’

She moistened her lips with her tongue.

‘It was – a hundred pounds – in notes.’

He reached across the table and caught her by the wrist.

‘You are lying! Even she wouldn’t do that – after forty years!’

She tried to step back, but he held her.

‘There is money to come when the lawyer has settled everything. An annuity – for me.’

‘How much?’

‘I do not know. They say I will be taken care of. There is something for you too – a parcel with money in it. There was one for you and one for me. She gave them to me when she was dying.’

He let go of her wrist.

‘Get them!’

She went without a word, her mind in a confusion of fear. She had always been afraid of Joseph – always. But at Underhill there had been Miss Olivia over them both, and even Joseph had been afraid of Miss Olivia. Now there was no one but him and her, and the money between them. He would take the money, hers as well as his, and she would be left. That was better than if he made her go with him – much, much better. There was a trembling in her limbs when she thought that he might make her go with him.

She was talking to herself as she went up the stairs.

‘No, Anna, no, he does not want you – he has never wanted you. And you need not go. You can say that you must stay here and get the money that is to come from the lawyer. Yes, you can say that. But he will not want you to come.’

The money was in the room that she was using, put away under the mattress of the bed. She got it out now. There were two parcels, done up with paper and string and written on in Miss Olivia’s hand, ‘Anna’ on the one, and ‘Joseph’ on the other. The packet marked ‘Anna’ was much thinner and flatter than the other. She had opened it and done it up again, so that she knew exactly what was in it – twenty five-pound notes doubled in half and laid in a little cardboard box. She had seen the box in Miss Olivia’s hand a week before she died.

The other parcel was much bulkier. It too had been prepared beforehand, only the name had been put on it after Miss Olivia had been taken ill. Anna’s legacy was already addressed, but it was a dying hand that had written Joseph’s name.

He looked up as she came back into the kitchen with the packages in either hand. He had lighted a cigarette, and the smoke and the acrid smell of it hung upon the air. He rolled his own cigarettes and he liked them strong. He looked at her package first.

‘You have opened it?’

‘Yes.’

‘You said there was a hundred pounds.’

‘Yes.’

He took his own and tore the paper off. A bundle of dirty one-pound notes came into view and he stared at them. They might have come from some low gambling dive. They reeked of tobacco. It was difficult to believe that Miss Olivia could have brought herself to handle them. There was no message, no enclosure of any kind, only his name on the outside wrapping. He laid down his cigarette on the table and began to count them. The notes must have got damp, for they stuck to one another. He licked his forefinger to separate them. He had a trick of it when he counted money, or even when he turned the pages of a book. That the notes were rank did not disturb him unduly. The finger went to his mouth again and again.

‘Thirty – thirty-one – thirty-two – ’

He thought there would be a hundred. With Anna’s hundred, not too bad, and there was the annuity to come.

He went on with his counting.

‘Forty – forty-one – forty-two – ’

The cigarette smoke came up in his throat and nose. He waved it away.

‘Fifty – fifty-one – fifty-two – ’

He began to lose count.

‘Sixty-five – sixty-seven – sixty-nine – ’

Anna stood on the other side of the table and watched his finger rise and fall. She saw the sweat come on his brow. His voice wandered, and the notes fell from his hand. He said, ‘I’m ill.’ And then, on a gasping breath, ‘I’m – poisoned – ’ His eyes accused her. His voice would have accused Olivia Benevent, but it choked in his throat.

He was dead before the doctor came.