AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I will recapitulate the vital points in a brief summary: The will was signed by Mr Clode, placed by me in an envelope—so far so good. It was then put by me in my overcoat pocket. That overcoat was taken from me by Mary and handed by her to George, who was in full sight of me whilst handling the coat. During the time that I was in the study Mrs Eurydice Spragg would have had plenty of time to extract the envelope from the coat pocket and read its contents and, as a matter of fact, finding the envelope on the ground and not in the pocket seemed to point to her having done so. But here we come to a curious point: she had the opportunity of substituting the blank paper, but no motive. The will was in her favour, and by substituting a blank piece of paper she despoiled herself of the heritage she had been so anxious to gain. The same applied to Mr Spragg. He, too, had the opportunity. He was left alone with the document in question for some two or three minutes in my office. But again, it was not to his advantage to do so. So we are faced with this curious problem: the two people who had the opportunity of substituting a blank piece of paper had no motive for doing so, and the two people who had a motive had no opportunity. By the way, I would not exclude the housemaid, Emma Gaunt, from suspicion. She was devoted to her young master and mistress and detested the Spraggs. She would, I feel sure, have been quite equal to attempting the substitution if she had thought of it. But although she actually handled the envelope when she picked it up from the floor and handed it to me, she certainly had no opportunity of tampering with its contents and she could not have substituted another envelope by some sleight of hand (of which anyway she would not be capable) because the envelope in question was brought into the house by me and no one there would be likely to have a duplicate.’
He looked round, beaming on the assembly.
‘Now, there is my little problem. I have, I hope, stated it clearly. I should be interested to hear your views.’
To everyone’s astonishment Miss Marple gave vent to a long and prolonged chuckle. Something seemed to be amusing her immensely.
‘What is the matter, Aunt Jane? Can’t we share the joke?’ said Raymond.
‘I was thinking of little Tommy Symonds, a naughty little boy, I am afraid, but sometimes very amusing. One of those children with innocent childlike faces who are always up to some mischief or other. I was thinking how last week in Sunday School he said, “Teacher, do you say yolk of eggs is white or yolk of eggs are white?” And Miss Durston explained that anyone would say “yolks of eggs are white, or yolk of egg is white”—and naughty Tommy said: “Well, I should say yolk of egg is yellow!” Very naughty of him, of course, and as old as the hills. I knew that one as a child.’
‘Very funny, my dear Aunt Jane,’ Raymond said gently, ‘but surely that has nothing to do with the very interesting story that Mr Petherick has been telling us.’
‘Oh yes, it has,’ said Miss Marple. ‘It is a catch! And so is Mr Petherick’s story a catch. So like a lawyer! Ah, my dear old friend!’ She shook a reproving head at him.
‘I wonder if you really know,’ said the lawyer with a twinkle.
Miss Marple wrote a few words on a piece of paper, folded them up and passed them across to him.
Mr Petherick unfolded the paper, read what was written on it and looked across at her appreciatively.
‘My dear friend,’ he said, ‘is there anything you do not know?’
‘I knew that as a child,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Played with it too.’
‘I feel rather out of this,’ said Sir Henry. ‘I feel sure that Mr Petherick has some clever legal legerdemain up his sleeve.’
‘Not at all,’ said Mr Petherick. ‘Not at all. It is a perfectly fair straightforward proposition. You must not pay any attention to Miss Marple. She has her own way of looking at things.’
‘We should be able to arrive at the truth,’ said Raymond West a trifle vexedly. ‘The facts certainly seem plain enough. Five persons actually touched that envelope. The Spraggs clearly could have meddled with it but equally clearly they did not do so. There remains the other three. Now, when one sees the marvellous ways that conjurers have of doing a thing before one’s eyes, it seems to me that the paper could have been extracted and another substituted by George Clode during the time he was carrying the overcoat to the far end of the room.’
‘Well, I think it was the girl,’ said Joyce. ‘I think the housemaid ran down and told her what was happening and she got hold of another blue envelope and just substituted the one for the other.’
Sir Henry shook his head. ‘I disagree with you both,’ he said slowly. ‘These sort of things are done by conjurers, and they are done on the stage and in novels, but I think they would be impossible to do in real life, especially under the shrewd eyes of a man like my friend Mr Petherick here. But I have an idea—it is only an idea and nothing more. We know that Professor Longman had just been down for a visit and that he said very little. It is only reasonable to suppose that the Spraggs may have been very anxious as to the result of that visit. If Simon Clode did not take them into his confidence, which is quite probable, they may have viewed his sending for Mr Petherick from quite another angle. They may have believed that Mr Clode had already made a will which benefited Eurydice Spragg and that this new one might be made for the express purpose of cutting her out as a result of Professor Longman’s revelations, or alternatively, as you lawyers say, Philip Garrod had impressed on his uncle the claims of his own flesh and blood. In that case, suppose Mrs Spragg prepared to effect a substitution. This she does, but Mr Petherick coming in at an unfortunate moment she had no time to read the real document and hastily destroys it by fire in case the lawyer should discover his loss.’
Joyce shook her head very decidedly.
‘She would never burn it without reading it.’
‘The solution is rather a weak one,’ admitted Sir Henry. ‘I suppose—er—Mr Petherick did not assist Providence himself.’
The suggestion was only a laughing one, but the little lawyer drew himself up in offended dignity.
‘A most improper suggestion,’ he said with some asperity.
‘What does Dr Pender say?’ asked Sir Henry.
‘I cannot say I have any very clear ideas. I think the substitution must have been effected by either Mrs Spragg or her husband, possibly for the motive that Sir Henry suggests. If she did not read the will until after Mr Petherick had departed, she would then be in somewhat of a dilemma, since she could not own up to her action in the matter. Possibly she would place it among Mr Clode’s papers where she thought it would be found after his death. But why it wasn’t found I don’t know. It might be a mere speculation this—that Emma Gaunt came across it—and out of misplaced devotion to her employers—deliberately destroyed it.’
‘I think Dr Pender’s solution is the best of all,’ said Joyce. ‘Is it right, Mr Petherick?’
The lawyer shook his head.
‘I will go on where I left off. I was dumbfounded and quite as much at sea as all of you are. I don’t think I should ever have guessed the truth—probably not—but I was enlightened. It was cleverly done too.
‘I went and dined with Philip Garrod about a month later and in the course of our after-dinner conversation he mentioned an interesting case that had recently come to his notice.’
‘ “I should like to tell you about it, Petherick, in confidence, of course.”
‘ “Quite so,” I replied.
‘ “A friend of mine who had expectations from one of his relatives was greatly distressed to find that that relative had thoughts of benefiting a totally unworthy person. My friend, I am afraid, is a trifle unscrupulous in his methods. There was a maid in the house who was greatly devoted to the interests of what I may call the legitimate party. My friend gave her very simple instructions. He gave her a fountain pen, duly filled. She was to place this in a drawer in the writing table in her master’s room, but not the usual drawer where the pen was generally kept. If her master asked her to witness his signature to any docu
ment and asked her to bring him his pen, she was to bring him not the right one, but this one which was an exact duplicate of it. That was all she had to do. He gave her no other information. She was a devoted creature and she carried out his instructions faithfully.”
‘He broke off and said:
‘ “I hope I am not boring you, Petherick.”
‘ “Not at all,” I said. “I am keenly interested.”
‘Our eyes met.
‘ “My friend is, of course, not known to you,” he said.
‘ “Of course not,” I replied.
‘ “Then that is all right,” said Philip Garrod.
‘He paused then said smilingly, “You see the point? The pen was filled with what is commonly known as Evanescent Ink—a solution of starch in water to which a few drops of iodine has been added. This makes a deep blue-black fluid, but the writing disappears entirely in four or five days.” ’
Miss Marple chuckled.
‘Disappearing ink,’ she said. ‘I know it. Many is the time I have played with it as a child.’
And she beamed round on them all, pausing to shake a finger once more at Mr Petherick.
