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Jesperson turned to me with a smile of secret triumph. I could have told you last night! said his expression, but he only remarked, “It was in all the papers, a year ago.”
“Fifteen months,” Randall corrected him. “He was attacked on his way to the railway station, not long after saying good night to Flora at her door. She wanted him to take a cab, because he had recently injured his foot, but he insisted that he could manage the short walk easily with the aid of a stick.” He hesitated, then said, “He borrowed a walking stick from the stand beside the door.”
“The injury must have been very recent,” I suggested, and Randall gave me a nod.
“Not long after dinner, that same evening. He tripped in the hall and struck his foot, but although it was quite painful, he insisted it was too minor to make a fuss about.”
“Not a man to make a fuss.”
“He was no weakling. And quite well able to look after himself. Something of an amateur pugilist.”
“Yet someone attacked him, unprovoked.”
“So we must assume. He was found lying sprawled on the path, his head bloody from a terrible blow. He was barely alive, unable to speak, and died from his injury that same night, without being able to indicate what had happened. It may be that he didn’t know, that the cowardly assault had come from behind.”
“No one was ever arrested,” Jesperson told me. “There were no suspects.”
I frowned. “Could anyone suggest a motive?”
“It was usually assumed to have been an impulsive crime, not planned, since the murder weapon was his own walking stick.”
“Not his own,” Mr. Randall objected. “Borrowed from Flora’s house.”
“Even so. It may be he was attacked by a gang of thugs who thought him an easy target because he limped. Yet, if they were intent on robbery, no one could explain why they did not take his wallet, stuffed with pound notes, or his gold watch, or anything else. He was found not long after he fell, lying in the open, near a streetlamp, and there were no obvious hiding places nearby. Although one witness reported hearing a cry, no one was seen running away or otherwise behaving in a suspicious manner.”
“Did Mr. Adcocks have enemies?” I asked.
“He seems to have been well liked by all who knew him, including those who did business with him. No one obviously benefited by his death.”
“Who inherited his property?”
“His mother.”
Before I could say anything more, Jesperson resumed. “Mr. Randall, you’ve suggested that Miss Bellamy believed his death was as a result of, or at least connected to, their engagement.”
“No one else thought so.”
“How did her family feel about it?”
He sighed and shook his head. “She has no family. Since being orphaned at an early age, Miss Bellamy has lived in the house of her guardian, a man by the name of Rupert Harcourt.”
Although the even tenor of his voice did not change, when he pronounced this name, I shivered, and knew we had come to the heart of the matter.
“Her parents named this man as her guardian?” Jesperson enquired.
Mr. Randall shook his head. “They did not know him. He had no connection to the family at all. When Mr. Bellamy died, the infant Flora was all alone in the world. A total stranger, reading of her situation in a newspaper, was so struck with pity that he offered her a home.”
“You find that strange,” I said, remarking his tone.
His eyes, for all their languid soulfulness, could still deliver a piercing look. “It is surely unusual for an unmarried, childless man of thirty-plus to go out of his way to adopt an unwanted infant. In fact, he never did adopt Flora, but set up some sort of legal arrangement to last until she married, or reached the age of twenty-one—a date still eight months in the future.”
“She has money?”
“Very little. To give him credit, Harcourt never touched her small inheritance, yet she never lacked for anything; toys and sweetmeats, clothes and meals, books and music lessons were all paid for from his own pocket. The money from her father was left to gain interest. I suppose it may be near one thousand pounds.”
It sounded a lot to me, being used to managing on less than thirty pounds a year, but it was not the sort of fortune to inspire a devious double-murder plot.
“Has any attempt been made on your life?” Jesperson asked suddenly, and I saw Mr. Randall wince and raise his hand to his head before he replied, “Oh, no, hardly—no, not at all.”
