“He says he just knows her to speak to. But one’s got to find somebody who has seen them together. You remember the Thompson case. It was the interview in the tea-shop that clinched it.”
“What I want to know,” said Wimsey, “is why—”
“Why what?”
“Why didn’t they compromise?” It was not what he had been going to say, but he felt defeated, and those words would end the sentence as well as any others.
“What’s that?” asked Hardy, quickly.
Peter explained.”
“When the question of survivorship came up, the Fentimans were ready to compromise and split the money. Why didn’t Miss Dorland agree? If your idea is the right one, it was much the safest way. But it was she who insisted on an inquiry.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Hardy. He was annoyed. All kinds of “stories” were coming his way to-day, and tomorrow there would probably be an arrest, and he wouldn’t be able to use them.
“They did agree to compromise in the end,” said Parker. “When was that?”
“After I told Penberthy there was going to be an exhumation,” said Wimsey, as though in spite of himself.
“There you are! They saw it was getting too dangerous.”
“Do you remember how nervous Penberthy was at the exhumation?” said Parker. “That man — what’s his name’s — joke about Palmer, and knocking over the jar?”
“What was that?” demanded Hardy again. Parker told him, and he listened, grinding his teeth. Another good story gone west. But it would all come out at the trial, and would be worth a headline.
“Robert Fentiman ought to be given a medal,” said Hardy. “If he hadn’t gone butting in—”
“Robert Fentiman?” inquired Parker, distantly.
Hardy grinned.
“If he didn’t fix up the old boy’s body, who did? Give us credit for a little intelligence.”
“One admits nothing,” said Parker, “but—”
“But everybody says he did it. Leave it at that. Somebody did it. If Somebody hadn’t butted in, it would have been jam for the Dorland.”
“Well, yes. Old Fentiman would just have gone home and pegged out quietly — and Penberthy would have given the certificate.”
“I’d like to know how many inconvenient people are polished off that way. Damn it — it’s so easy.”
“I wonder how Penberthy’s share of the boodle was to be transferred to him.”
“I don’t,” said Hardy. “Look here here’s this girl. Calls herself an artist. Paints bad pictures. Right. Then she meets this doctor fellow. He’s mad on glands. Shrewd man — knows there’s money in glands. She starts taking up glands. Why?”
“That was a year ago.”
“Precisely. Penberthy isn’t a rich man. Retired Army surgeon, with a brass plate and a consulting-room in Harley Street — shares the house with two other hard-up brass-platers. Lives on a few old dodderers down at the Bellona. Has an idea, if only he could start one of these clinics for rejuvenating people, he could be a millionaire. All these giddy old goats who want their gay time over again — why, they’re a perfect fortune to the man with a bit of capital and a hell of a lot of cheek. Then this girl comes along — rich old woman’s heiress — and he goes after her. It’s all fixed up. He’s to accommodate her by removing the obstacle to the fortune, and she obligingly responds by putting the money into his clinic. In order not to make it too obvious, she has to pretend to get a dickens of an interest in glands. So she drops painting and takes to medicine. What could be clearer?”
“But that means,” put in Wimsey, “that she must have known all about the will at least a year ago.”
“Why not?”
“Well that brings us back to the old question: Why the delay?”
“And it gives us the answer,” said Parker. “They waited till the interest in the glands and things was so firmly established and recognised by everybody that nobody would connect it with the General’s death.”
“Of course,” said Wimsey. He felt that matters were rushing past him at a bewildering rate. But George was safe, anyhow.
“How soon do you think you’ll be able to take action?” asked Hardy. “I suppose you’ll want a bit more solid proof before you actually arrest them.”
“I’d have to be certain that they don’t wriggle out of it,” said Parker, slowly. “It’s not enough to prove that they were acquainted. There may be letters, of course, when we go over the girl’s things. Or Penberthy’s — though he’s hardly the man to leave compromising documents lying about.”
“You haven’t detained Miss Dorland?”
“No; we’ve let her loose — on a string. I don’t mind telling you one thing. There’s been no communication of any kind with Penberthy.”
“Of course there hasn’t,” said Wimsey. “They’ve quarrelled.”
The others stared at him.
“How do you know that?” demanded Parker, annoyed.
“Oh, well — it doesn’t matter — I think so, that’s all. And any way, they would take jolly good care not to communicate, once the alarm was given.”
“Hallo!” broke in Hardy, “here’s Waffles. Late again. Waffles! — what have you been doing, old boy?”
“Interviewing the Rushworths,” said Waffles, edging his way into a chair by Hardy. He was a thin, sandy person, with a tired manner. Hardy introduced him to Wimsey and Parker.
“Got your story in?”
“Oh, yes. Awful lot of cats these women are. Ma Rushworth — she’s the sloppy sort of woman with her head in the clouds all the time, who never sees anything till it’s stuck right under her nose — she pretends, of course, that she always thought Ann Dorland was an unwholesome kind of girl. I nearly asked why, in that case, she had her about the house; but I didn’t. Anyway, Mrs. Rushworth said, they didn’t know her very intimately. They wouldn’t, of course. Wonderful how these soulful people sheer off at the least suggestion of unpleasantness.”
“Did you get anything about Penberthy?”
“Oh, yes — I got something.”
“Good?”
“Oh, yes.”
Hardy, with Fleet Street’s delicate reticence towards the man with an exclusive story, did not press the question. The talk turned back and went over the old ground. Waffles Newton agreed with Salcombe Hardy’s theory.
“The Rushworths must surely know something. Not the mother, perhaps — but the girl. If she’s engaged to Penberthy, she’ll have noticed any other woman who seemed to have an understanding with him. Women see these things.”
“You don’t suppose that they’re going to confess that dear Dr. Penberthy ever had an understanding with anybody but dear Naomi,” retorted Newton. “Besides, they aren’t such fools as not to know that Penberthy’s connection with the Dorland girl must be smothered up at all costs. They know she did it, all right, but they aren’t going to compromise him.”