different from the home-life of the English judiciary … Sorry, I can see it wouldn’t be a joking matter. Have you managed to stave them off so far?’
‘Prester John’s too smart an operator to go in with all guns firing at this stage. But don’t think there haven’t been hints. Julius is dealing with them. The estate will take time to be wound up, blah blah … legatees have to be traced, etcetera etcetera, and there’s always the goddamned taxes to the government to be settled. Oh, we can give them the runaround for a while yet.’
At that point Van Gryson had leant forward and said with the utmost seriousness: ‘You see how it is. No one must know about the other will back home in New York. Miss Janvier won’t talk, that’s for sure. It was her blunder and she doesn’t want it advertised. The two witnesses are dumbos—they can hardly remember whose will it was anyway, and they’re not being encouraged to try. And we whisked that file copy out of the cabinet before anyone got a peek at it. Believe you me, Lennox, we’ve been thorough.’
‘So it seems. Which only leaves me. You didn’t really have to contact me at all, did you, Dale, unless you had found the original of the second will?’
Van Gryson had assumed his honest counsellor’s face, candid to the point of piety.
‘Ethics of the profession, Lennox. Straight dealing as between men of the law. Julius Eikenberg and I, we discussed the situation at length and came to the conclusion it was only right that you should be told. No, we didn’t have to tell you. We couldn’t afford even to hint at it in a letter. Instead, I came over specially to put it to you.’
Once you had me summed up, Kemp thought, and found me maverick enough to just possibly do whatever you might find expedient in the future.
To take the American off his soapbox for a moment, he had murmured: ‘You really couldn’t afford not to. You’d have been pretty hard-pressed for an explanation if the second will, all neatly typed up on your firm’s paper and still in its special envelope, was discovered stuck up the chimney after you’d already disposed of the assets in accordance with the terms of the first …’
‘There aren’t any chimneys,’ said Van Gryson tersely, deciding to ignore the rest of Kemp’s perfectly cogent observation. ‘And there were no loose floorboards in any of the rooms or loose tiles in the bathroom. We inventoried all the furniture, gave us the excuse to rake the whole place over. You couldn’t have hid a matchstick in that apartment.’
‘I still think you should investigate those servants.’
Van Gryson’s eyes were bland. ‘You thinking of coming over and doing it for us?’
Kemp had shrunk back in horror at the suggestion.
‘Not me! It’s only in fiction that the hero hops on a plane and does his stuff in a foreign city. I can’t even read a street map of London, never mind find my way to the subway in New York. No, I’m staying right here where I belong. But it mightn’t be a bad idea if you employed a private eye—is that what they’re still called over there?’
Dale Van Gryson put on a sly look. He pursed his lips rather primly.
‘Mr Eikenberg has that in hand. We’re keeping an eye on anyone who was around at the time of Mrs Probert’s death. The rental on the apartment’s paid for another three months and we’ve retained the servants as caretakers. I admit you’ve got me a bit rattled on Mrs Hermanos. Seemed a nice woman to me …’
‘I tend to be suspicious of nice women. And it might be a good idea to have another talk with that doctor. Sound him out on Muriel’s state of mind … And the night nurse too, you haven’t said much about her.’
‘There’s nothing to tell. She came from a highly reputable agency, and had been recommended by the doctor himself. We didn’t get to speak to her as she’s gone upstate to nurse her own mother who is dying, but don’t worry, we’ll get round to her in due course. We do have some very discreet people we use from time to time on the financial side of matrimonial cases, that kind of thing … No, I don’t think we’d call them private eyes. We have to be careful, you know, we’re a very respectable firm.’
‘Whatever you call them, I’d be obliged, Dale, if you could let me see their reports, if any. After all, I’m an interested party … even under that first will I get a ruby necklace.’
‘Those damned rubies!’ Van Gryson exclaimed. ‘D’you know what happened? They were safe in her bank up till a few weeks before she died, then on one of her trips to the hospital she goes and gets them out. The bank showed us the receipt. Now they’ve vanished into thin air.’
‘I put my money on the butler,’ Kemp had said, cheerfully before the two men went their separate ways. ‘In English detective fiction it’s always the butler who dunnit.’
The first contributions to what Kemp liked to call his Letters from America arrived at the same time as an area of high pressure also from across the Atlantic which brought hot weather to Newtown in mid-July. The compliments slip from Eikenberg & Lazard seemed to distance itself from the other contents despite being marked by the initials ‘DVG’, the envelope itself was designated Private and Confidential and sent to Kemp’s home address. He felt like the recipient of subversive mail.
There were photostat copies of five reports, two by Alfred Orme and three by Bernard Shulman. Fortunately the package had arrived on a Saturday morning so Kemp was able to spread them out between the butter dish and the marmalade jar and give them his whole attention.
Glancing over the typescript, Kemp guessed that Alfred Orme must be as old as his machine—surely no one had called a child Alfred for some fifty years. Reading confirmed this, the style was pedestrian and the material set out without frills in a manner with which Kemp was familiar as he had perused plenty of police statements which had the same lack of literary merit. Orme was probably a retired officer augmenting his pension by doing routine investigative work for legal firms. He would be thorough and discreet but possibly unimaginative. He was no great typist judging by the pepper-and-salt effect on the paper which hadn’t been improved by photocopying.
The first report was dated 7.2.89. which Kemp took a moment to work out; he could never see why Americans, who were supposed to be logical people, should put the month first, then the day, then the year.
Tuesday, July 2—Report by Alfred Orme
Called at Argus Automobiles, a firm known to me as a reputable rental car agency. Spoke with Frank Miner, aged forty-two, clean licence, no police record, employed by Argus five years. No complaints by employers. Wears chauffeur’s uniform, peaked cap, a clean, tidy, well-set-up man of honest appearance.
Showed no reluctance to answering questions about Mrs Muriel Probert when I disclosed my interest as an old friend of the deceased who had lost touch and been shocked to hear of her death. As instructed, I produced photograph. Though taken over two years ago Miner recognized it immediately, commenting the subject was thinner and the features more lined when he knew her. During the last six months he had driven Mrs Probert to the Mount Sinai Medical Centre at least once a week.
Engaging him in conversation Miner said she was a nice lady, and talked to him when she was well enough. Because he had been sympathetic to her condition it got that he was the driver she always asked for. (Confirmed by Mr Sherrett, Manager for Argus, who said Miner was in fact the only driver Mrs Probert would have.)
