said Kemp, who had already guessed. ‘You can’t find the new will. You know it was made, you have a perhaps inadequate copy in your office, the client took the original and now it’s missing.’
‘How did you know?’
‘Happens all the time,’ said Kemp airily. He was beginning to feel the effects of the wine. ‘Nine times out of ten when a client takes an original will from their solicitor’s office it’s gone when they come to die.’
‘You’re a cynic, Lennox.’
‘No, just realistic. How did this one disappear?’
‘God only knows. It wasn’t in her handbag when we looked, and it wasn’t anywhere in that apartment. We’re her executors, damn it, don’t think we didn’t ransack the place. Besides, the staff swear Mrs Probert never went anywhere in the house except her own bedroom and the adjoining bathroom … She used the same rented limousine every time she went to the hospital, and the same chauffeur. He says she went nowhere else on these trips except for that one evening when she had him stop by our office. And that was only a couple of weeks before she died.’
Kemp sat still for a moment, deep in thought.
‘Muriel took the will away with her,’ he said carefully, ‘and she returned to her apartment with it. She must have had a reason for doing so. She had been happy to let you keep the other one so why would she want to take the new one? Perhaps to show it to someone …’
Van Gryson shook his head.
‘She was having no visitors at the time. And she never left the apartment again—of that we’re absolutely sure. According to the doctor, her condition suddenly deteriorated—he’d been expecting it and was keeping an eye on her. She could hardly move from her bed. When he advised hospitalization she wouldn’t hear of it, said she wanted to die in her own house so he ordered home nursing to see her through to the end …’
Kemp pursed his lips.
‘Reliable man, this doctor?’
‘Absolutely. Don’t think we didn’t check.’ Van Gryson was terse.
‘What about the servants and the nurses?’
‘Lennox, you gotta remember we couldn’t go around badgering folk. It was a tricky enough situation for our firm. There was a bit of a time-lapse before we—er—discovered about the second will.’
Kemp raised his eyebrows. ‘How come?’ He felt he might as well slip into the idiom.
‘Well, as I said, Miss Janvier went on holiday that night. Her secretary didn’t get round to doing the filing for a week or two …’ His voice trailed off.
Kemp could barely hide a smile. So things like that could still happen even in the best-run offices.
‘And in the meantime your firm assumed there was only the earlier will and so took no action?’
‘In the meantime—’ Van Gryson gulped as if he’d swallowed a draught of bitter medicine—‘Mr Eikenberg and I attended the funeral flanked on either side by Messrs Madison and Horth in good black overcoats with velvet collars …’
Kemp let out a soft whistle.
‘Showing a proper respect as the heirs-at-law … I can restrain my curiosity no longer, Dale. Indulge it before it bursts out of me. You have a copy of this later will?’
Van Gryson withdrew a single sheet from his folder, and held it out between thumb and forefinger as if it was a leaf of stinging nettle. Kemp reached over and took it from him.
‘OK, OK,’ said the big American. ‘I guess you can stand the shock.’
Then he got up and took his hunched shoulders for a walk round the room like a boxer who has just put his man on the canvas.
It was a simple carbon on flimsy with the name of the testatrix and the names and addresses of the two witnesses written in hurriedly beside the attestation clause. The will itself was brief and to the point:
After cancelling all previous dispositions, Muriel Probert, widow, left everything of which she died possessed to her ex-husband Lennox Kemp, of Newtown, England, in recognition of the great service he had rendered her in the past. It was dated the fifth day of April in the present year.
Lennox Kemp had only just seated himself at his desk the following morning when Elvira brought in the mail. She looked down at him with mild disapproval. ‘I waited,’ she said, ‘because you’re late. You don’t look very well.’
‘If you must know, I’ve got a hangover, and I didn’t get much sleep.’
‘Well, if you will go out on the town …’ She put the letters down in front of him. ‘Black coffee’s what you need.’
Despite two strong cups of it, Kemp still found it hard to concentrate on his correspondence; there were too many other things on his mind. He wanted a clear head, he wanted a second opinion. He thought of Tony Lambert, his most intelligent colleague and an expert on probate, but dismissed the idea. He couldn’t talk it over with anyone else, not yet. The last thing Dale Van Gryson had said to him before they parted enjoined confidentiality.
‘Give us time, Lennox. Let us get this thing straightened out at the New York end. It’s only six weeks since the death, we can procrastinate for a while …’
‘But there’s got to be a showdown at some time,’ he’d told the American, ‘it can’t be kept under wraps for ever. Not unless …’ Kemp hadn’t finished the sentence, watching the expression on the other man’s face.
Van Gryson had said nothing but Kemp grinned to himself now. He knew damned well what was in that astute counsellor’s mind—perhaps even in the corporate mind of his firm:
‘Unless I, Lennox Kemp, disclaim any interest in the estate of the late Mrs Probert, and no meeting has ever taken place between myself and any of her trustees …’
It had gone unsaid, and might very well remain so, but the very idea of himself running a clutch of dubious gambling dens in Las Vegas was enough to make him choke over the breakfast table the two of them had shared in the hotel that early morning.
They had discussed the matter more soberly than on the previous night, Kemp probing for information, Van Gryson prevaricating and, in Kemp’s view, revealing the depths of his ignorance. Kemp had been struck by the difference in their approach. The American’s main concern was how to keep his firm out of trouble, which meant carrying out the duties of trustees and executors while keeping the snake in the basket by sitting firmly on the lid. Kemp, who was often ruefully aware that he’d have made a better detective than a solicitor, was more taken up with the investigation possibilities.
He had been careful, however, to lay fairly and squarely before Van Gryson his own view of the position at law.
‘I don’t know whether it’s the same under the United States legal system,’ he’d said, ‘but here in England a will contained in a copy or even a completed draft may be admitted to probate on an application to the Court if proper evidence as
