Dorothy L. Sayers - [Lord Peter Wimsey 03]

by Unnatural Death

  “I told the lady—Miss Grant was the name she gave, by the way—that I should like to take counsel’s opinion before giving her any advice, and asked if she could call again the following day. She said she could, rose and thanked me, offering me her hand. In taking it, I happened to notice rather an odd scar, running across the backs of all the fingers—rather as though a chisel or something had slipped at some time. I noticed it quite idly, of course, but it was lucky for me I did.

  “Miss Grant duty turned up the next day. I had looked up a very learned friend in the interval, and gave her the same opinion that I gave you just now. She looked rather concerned about it—in fact, almost more annoyed than concerned.

  “ ‘It seems rather unfair,’ she said, ‘that people’s family money should go away to the Crown like that. After all, a great-niece is quite a near relation, really.’

  “I replied that, provided the great-niece could call witnesses to prove that the deceased had always had the intention of leaving her the money, the Crown would, in all probability, allot the estate, or a suitable proportion of it, in accordance with the wishes of the deceased. It would, however, lie entirely within the discretion of the court to do so or not, and, of course, if there had been any quarrel or dispute about the matter at any time, the judge might take an unfavourable view of the great-niece’s application.

  “ ‘In any case,’ I added, ‘I don’t know that the great-niece is excluded under the Act—I only understand that she may be. In any case, there are still six months before the Act comes into force, and many things may happen before then.’

  “ ‘You mean that Auntie may die,’ she said, ‘but she’s not really dangerously ill—only mental, as Nurse calls it.’

  “Anyhow, she went away then after paying my fee, and I noticed that the ‘friend’s great-aunt’ had suddenly become ‘Auntie,’ and decided that my client felt a certain personal interest in the matter.”

  “I fancy she had,” said Parker. “When did you see her again?”

  “Oddly enough, I ran across her in the following December. I was having a quick and early dinner in Soho, before going on to a show. The little place I usually patronise was very full, and I had to sit at a table where a woman was already seated. As I muttered the usual formula about ‘Was anybody sitting there,’ she looked up, and I promptly recognised my client.

  “ ‘Why, how do you do, Miss Grant?’ I said.

  “ ‘I beg your pardon,’ she replied, rather stiffly. ‘I think you are mistaken.’

  “ ‘I beg your pardon,’ said I, stiffer still, ‘my name is Trigg, and you came to consult me in Bedford Row last June. But if I am intruding, I apologise and withdraw.’

  “She smiled then, and said, ‘I’m sorry, I did not recognise you for the moment.’

  “I obtained permission to sit at her table.

  “By way of starting a conversation, I asked whether she had taken any further advice in the matter of the inheritance. She said no, she had been quite content with what I had told her. Still to make conversation, I inquired whether the great-aunt had made a will after all. She replied, rather briefly, that it had not been necessary; the old lady had died. I noticed that she was dressed in black, and was confirmed in my opinion that she herself was the great-niece concerned.

  “We talked for some time, Inspector, and I will not conceal from you that I found Miss Grant a very interesting personality. She had an almost masculine understanding. I may say I am not the sort of man who prefers women to be brainless. No, I am rather modern in that respect. If ever I was to take a wife, Inspector, I should wish her to be an intelligent companion.”

  Parker said Mr. Trigg’s attitude did him great credit. He also made the mental observation that Mr. Trigg would probably not object to marrying a young woman who had inherited money and was unencumbered with relations.

  “It is rare,” went on Mr. Trigg, “to find a woman with a legal mind. Miss Grant was unusual in that respect. She took a great interest in some case or other that was prominent in the newspapers at the time—I forget now what it was—and asked me some remarkably sensible and intelligent questions. I must say that I quite enjoyed our conversation. Before dinner was over, we had got on to more personal topics, in the course of which I happened to mention that I lived in Golder’s Green.”

  “Did she give you her own address?”

  “She said she was staying at the Peveril Hotel in Bloomsbury, and that she was looking for a house in Town. I said that I might possibly hear of something out Hampstead way, and offered my professional services in case she should require them. After dinner I accompanied her back to her hotel, and bade her good-bye in the lounge.”

  “She was really staying there, then?”

  “Apparently. However, about a fortnight later, I happened to hear of a house in Golder’s Green that had fallen vacant suddenly. It belonged, as a matter of fact, to a client of mine. In pursuance of my promise, I wrote to Miss Grant at the Peveril. Receiving no reply, I made inquiries there, and found that she had left the hotel the day after our meeting, leaving no address. In the hotel register, she had merely given her address as Manchester. I was somewhat disappointed, but thought no more about the matter.

  “About a month later—on January 26th, to be exact, I was sitting at home reading a book, preparatory to retiring to bed. I should say that I occupy a flat, or rather maisonette, in a small house which has been divided to make two establishments. The people on the ground floor were away at that time, so that I was quite alone in the house. My housekeeper only comes in by the day. The telephone rang—I noticed the time. It was a quarter to eleven. I answered it, and a woman’s voice spoke, begging me to come instantly to a certain house on Hampstead Heath, to make a will for someone who was at the point of death.”

  “Did you recognise the voice?”

  “No. It sounded like a servant’s voice. At any rate, it had a strong cockney accent. I asked whether tomorrow would not be time enough, but the voice urged me to hurry or it might be too late. Rather annoyed, I put my things on and went out. It was a most unpleasant night, cold and foggy. I was lucky enough to find a taxi on the nearest rank. We drove to the address, which we had great difficulty in finding, as everything was pitch-black. It turned out to be a small house in a very isolated position on the Heath—in fact, there was no proper approach to it. I left the taxi on the road, about a couple of hundred yards off, and asked the man to wait for me, as I was very doubtful of ever finding another taxi in that spot at that time of night. He grumbled a good deal, but consented to wait if I promised not to be very long.

  “I made my way to the house. At first I thought it was quite dark, but presently I saw a faint glimmer in a ground-floor room. I rang the bell. No answer, though I could hear it trilling loudly. I rang again and knocked. Still no answer. It was bitterly cold. I struck a match to be sure I had come to the right house, and then I noticed that the front door was ajar.

  “I thought that perhaps the servant who had called me was so much occupied with her sick mistress as to be unable to leave her to come to the door. Thinking that in that case I might be of assistance to her, I pushed the door open and went in. The hall was perfectly dark, and I bumped against an umbrella-stand in entering. I thought I heard a faint voice calling or moaning, and when my eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, I stumbled forward, and saw a dim light coming from a door on the left.”

  “Was that the room which you had seen to be illumined from outside?”

  “I think so. I called out, ‘May I come in?’ and a very low, weak voice replied, ‘Yes, please.’ I pushed the door open and entered a room furnished as a sitting-room. In one corner there was a couch, on which some bed-clothes appeared to have been hurriedly thrown to enable it to be used as a bed. On the couch lay a woman, all alone.

  “I could only dimly make her out. There was no light in the room except a small oil-lamp, with a green shade so tilted as to keep the light from the sick woman’s eyes. There was a fir
e in the grate, but it had burnt low. I could see, however, that the woman’s head and face were swathed in white bandages. I put out my hand and felt for the electric switch, but she called out:

  “ ‘No light, please—it hurts me.’ ”

  “How did she see you put your hand to the switch?”

  “Well,” said Mr. Trigg, “that was an odd thing. She didn’t speak, as a matter of fact, till I had actually clicked the switch down. But nothing happened. The light didn’t come on.”

  “Really?”

  “No. I supposed that the bulb had been taken away or had gone out. However, I said nothing, and came up to the bed. She said in a sort of half-whisper, ‘Is that the lawyer?’

  “I said, ‘Yes,’ and asked what I could do for her.

  “She said, ‘I have had a terrible accident. I can’t live. I want to make my will quickly.’ I asked whether there was nobody with her. ‘Yes, yes,’ she said in a hurried way, ‘my servant will be back in a moment. She has gone to look for a doctor.’ ‘But,’ I said, ‘couldn’t she have rung up? You are not fit to be left alone.’ ‘We couldn’t get through to one,’ she replied, ‘it’s all right. She will be here soon. Don’t waste time. I must make my will.’ She spoke in a dreadful, gasping way, and I felt that the best thing would be to do what she wanted, for fear of agitating her. I drew a chair to the table where the lamp was, got out my fountain pen and a printed will-form with which I had provided myself, and expressed myself ready to receive her instructions.

  “Before beginning, she asked me to give her a little brandy and water from a decanter which stood on the table. I did so, and she took a small sip, which seemed to revive her. I placed the glass near her hand, and at her suggestion mixed another glass for myself. I was very glad of it, for, as I said, it was a beast of a night, and the room was cold. I looked around for some extra coals to put on the fire, but could see none.”

  “That,” said Parker, “is extremely interesting and suggestive.”

  “I thought it queer at the time. But the whole thing was queer. Anyway, I then said I was ready to begin. She said, ‘You may think I am a little mad, because my head has been so hurt. But I am quite sane. But he shan’t have a penny of the money.’ I asked her if someone had attacked her. She replied, ‘My husband. He thinks he has killed me. But I am going to live long enough to will the money away.’ She then said that her name was Mrs. Marion Mead, and proceeded to make a will, leaving her estate, which amounted to about £10,000, among various legatees, including a daughter and three or four sisters. It was rather a complicated will, as it included various devices for tying up the daughter’s money in a trust, so as to prevent her from ever handing over any of it to the father.”

  “Did you make a note of the names and addresses of the people involved?”

  “I did, but, as you will see later on, I could make no use of them. The testatrix was certainly clear-headed enough about the provisions of the will, though she seemed terribly weak, and her voice never rose above a whisper after that one time when she had called to me not to turn on the light.

  “At length I finished my notes of the will, and started to draft it out on to the proper form. There were no signs of the servant’s return, and I began to be really anxious. Also the extreme cold—or something else—added to the fact that it was now long past my bed-time, was making me appallingly sleepy. I poured out another stiff little dose of the brandy to warm me up, and went on writing out the will.

  “When I had finished I said:

  “ ‘How about signing this? We need another witness to make it legal.’

  “She said, ‘My servant must be here in a minute or two. I can’t think what has happened to her.’

  “ ‘I expect she has missed her way in the fog,’ I said. ‘However, I will wait a little longer. I can’t go and leave you like this.’

  “She thanked me feebly, and we sat for some time in silence. As time went on, I began to feel the situation to be increasingly uncanny. The sick woman breathed heavily, and moaned from time to time. The desire for sleep overpowered me more and more. I could not understand it.

  “Presently it occurred to me, stupefied though I felt, that the most sensible thing would be to get the taxi-man—if he was still there—to come in and witness the will with me, and then to go myself to find a doctor. I sat, sleepily revolving this in my mind, and trying to summon energy to speak. I felt as though a great weight of inertia was pressing down upon me. Exertion of any kind seemed almost beyond my powers.

  “Suddenly something happened which brought me back to myself. Mrs. Mead turned a little over upon the couch and peered at me intently, as it seemed, in the lamplight. To support herself, she put both her hands on the edge of the table. I noticed, with a vague sense of something unexpected, that the left hand bore no wedding-ring. And then I noticed something else.

  “Across the back of the fingers of the right hand went a curious scar—as though a chisel or some such thing had slipped and cut them.”

  Parker sat upright in his chair.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Trigg, “that interests you. It startled me. Or rather, startled isn’t quite the word. In my oppressed state, it affected me like some kind of nightmare. I struggled upright in my chair, and the woman sank back upon her pillows.

  “At that moment there came a violent ring at the bell.”

  “The servant?”

  “No—thank Heaven it was my taxi-driver, who had become tired of waiting. I thought—I don’t quite know what I thought—but I was alarmed. I gave some kind of shout or groan, and the man came straight in. Happily, I had left the door open as I had found it.

  “I pulled myself together sufficiently to ask him to witness the will. I must have looked queer and spoken in a strange way, for I remember how he looked from me to the brandy-bottle. However, he signed the paper after Mrs. Mead, who wrote her name in a weak, straggling hand as she lay on her back.

  “ ‘Wot next, guv’nor?’ asked the man, when this was done.

  “I was feeling dreadfully ill by now. I could only say, ‘Take me home.’

  “He looked at Mrs. Mead and then at me, and said, ‘Ain’t there nobody to see to the lady, sir?’

  “I said, ‘Fetch a doctor. But take me home first.’

  “I stumbled out of the house on his arm. I heard him muttering something about its being a rum start. I don’t remember the drive home. When I came back to life, I was in my own bed, and one of the local doctors was standing over me.

  “I’m afraid this story is getting very long and tedious. To cut matters short, it seems the taxi-driver, who was a very decent, intelligent fellow, had found me completely insensible at the end of the drive. He didn’t know who I was, but he hunted in my pocket and found my visiting-card and my latch-key. He took me home, got me upstairs and, deciding that if I was drunk, I was a worse drunk than he had ever encountered in his experience, humanely went round and fetched a doctor.

  “The doctor’s opinion was that I had been heavily drugged with veronal or something of that kind. Fortunately, if the idea was to murder me, the dose had been very much under-estimated. We went into the matter thoroughly, and the upshot was that I must have taken about 30 grains of the stuff. It appears that it is a difficult drug to trace by analysis, but that was the conclusion the doctor came to, looking at the matter all round. Undoubtedly the brandy had been doped.

  “Of course, we went round to look at the house next day. It was all shut up, and the local milkman informed us that the occupiers had been away for a week and were not expected home for another ten days. We got into communication with them, but they appeared to be perfectly genuine, ordinary people, and they declared they knew nothing whatever about it. They were accustomed to go away every so often, just shutting the house and not bothering about a caretaker or anything. The man came along at once, naturally, to investigate matters, but couldn’t find that anything had been stolen or disturbed, except that a pair of sheets and some pillows showed signs of use,
and a scuttle of coal had been used in the sitting-room. The coal-cellar, which also contained the electric meter, had been left locked and the meter turned off before the family left—they apparently had a few grains of sense—which accounts for the chill darkness of the house when I entered it. The visitor had apparently slipped back the catch of the pantry window—one of the usual gimcrack affairs—with a knife or something, and had brought her own lamp, siphon and brandy. Daring, but not really difficult.

  “No Mrs. Mead or Miss Grant was to be heard of anywhere, as I needn’t tell you. The tenants of the house were not keen to start expensive inquiries—after all, they’d lost nothing but a shilling’s worth of coals—and on consideration, and seeing that I hadn’t actually been murdered or anything, I thought it best to let the matter slide. It was a most unpleasant adventure.”

  “I’m sure it was. Did you ever hear from Miss Grant again?”

  “Why, yes. She rang me up twice—once, after three months, and again only a fortnight ago, asking for an appointment. You may think me cowardly, Mr. Parker, but each time I put her off. I didn’t quite know what might happen. As a matter of fact, the opinion I formed in my own mind was that I had been entrapped into that house with the idea of making me spend the night there and afterwards blackmailing me. That was the only explanation I could think of which would account for the sleeping-draught. I thought discretion was the better part of valour, and gave my clerks and my housekeeper instructions that if Miss Grant should call at any time I was out and not expected back.”

  “H’m. Do you suppose she knew you had recognised the scar on her hand?”

  “I’m sure she didn’t. Otherwise she would hardly have made advances to me in her own name again.”