Dorothy L. Sayers - [Lord Peter Wimsey 03] (19 page)

“And what happened to Simon’s children?” asked Parker. “Did he have any?”

The clergyman nodded, and a deep, dusky flush showed under his dark skin.

“I am his grandson,” he said, simply. “That is why I came over to England. When the Lord called me to feed His lambs among my own people, I was in quite good circumstances. I had the little sugar plantation which had come down to me through my father, and I married and was very happy. But we fell on bad times—the sugar crop failed, and our little flock became smaller and poorer and could not give so much support to their minister. Besides, I , was getting too old and frail to do my work—and I have a sick wife, too, and God has blessed us with many daughters, who needed our care. I was in great straits. And then I came upon some old family papers belonging to my grandfather, Simon, and learned that his name was not Harkaway but Dawson, and I thought, maybe I had a family in England and that God would yet raise up a table in the wilderness. Accordingly, when the time came to send a representative home to our London Headquarters, I asked permission to resign my ministry out there and come over to England.”

“Did you get into touch with anybody?”

“Yes. I went to Crofton—which was mentioned in my grandfather’s letters—and saw a lawyer in the town there—a Mr. Probyn of Croftover. You know him?”

“I’ve heard of him.”

“Yes. He was very kind, and very much interested to see me. He showed me the genealogy of the family, and how my grandfather should have been the heir to the property.”

“But the property had been lost by that time, had it not?”

“Yes. And, unfortunately—when I showed him my grandmother’s marriage certificate, he—he told me that it was no certificate at all. I fear that Simon Dawson was a sad sinner. He took my grandmother to live with him, as many of the planters did take women of colour, and he gave her a document which was supposed to be a certificate of marriage signed by the Governor of the country. But when Mr. Probyn inquired into it, he found that it was all a sham, and no such governor had ever existed. It was distressing to my feelings as a Christian, of course—but since there was no property, it didn’t make any actual difference to us.”

“That was bad luck,” said Peter, sympathetically.

“I called resignation to my aid, said the old Indian, with a dignified little bow. “Mr. Probyn was also good enough to send me with a letter of introduction to Miss Agatha Dawson, the only surviving member of our family.”

“Yes, she lived at Leahampton.”

“She received me in the most charming way, and when I told her who I was—acknowledging, of course, that I had not the slightest claim upon her—she was good enough to make me an allowance of £100 a year, which she continued till her death.”

“Was that the only time you saw her?”

“Oh, yes. I would not intrude upon her. It could not be agreeable to her to have a relative of my complexion continually at her house,” said the Rev. Hallelujah, with a kind of proud humility. “But she gave me lunch, and spoke very kindly.”

“And—forgive my askin’—hope it isn’t impertinent—but does Miss Whittaker keep up the allowance?”

“Well, no—I—perhaps I should not expect it, but it would have made a great difference to our circumstances. And Miss Dawson rather led me to hope that it might be continued. She told me that she did not like the idea of making a will, but, she said, ‘It is not necessary at all, Cousin Hallelujah, Mary will have all my money when I am gone, and she can continue the allowance on my behalf.’ But perhaps Miss Whittaker did not get the money after all?”

“Oh, yes, she did. It is very odd. She may have forgotten about it.”

“I took the liberty of writing her a few words of spiritual comfort when her aunt died. Perhaps that did not please her. Of course, I did not write again. Yet I am loath to believe that she has hardened her heart against the unfortunate. No doubt there is some explanation.”

“No doubt,” said Lord Peter. “Well, I’m very grateful to you for your kindness. That has quite cleared up the little matter of Simon and his descendants. I’ll just make a note of the names and dates, if I may.”

“Certainly. I will bring you the paper which Mr. Probyn kindly made out for me, showing the whole of the family. Excuse me.”

He was not gone long, and soon reappeared with a genealogy, neatly typed out on a legal-looking sheet of blue paper.

Wimsey began to note down the particulars concerning Simon Dawson and his son, Bosun, and his grandson, Hallelujah. Suddenly he put his finger on an entry further along.

“Look here, Charles,” he said. “Here is our Father Paul—the bad boy who turned R.C. and became a monk.”

“So he is. But—he’s dead, Peter—died in 1922, three years before Agatha Dawson.”

“Yes. We must wash him out. Well, these little setbacks will occur.”

They finished their notes, bade farewell to the Rev. Hallelujah, and emerged to find Esmeralda valiantly defending Mrs. Merdle against all-comers. Lord Peter handed over the half-crown and took delivery of the car.

“The more I hear of Mary Whittaker,” he said, “the less I like her. She might at least have given poor old Cousin Hallelujah his hundred quid.”

“She’s a rapacious female,” agreed Parker. “Well, anyway, Father Paul’s safely dead, and Cousin Hallelujah is illegitimately descended. So there’s an end of the long-lost claimant from overseas.”

“Damn it all!” cried Wimsey, taking both hands from the steering-wheel and scratching his head, to Parker’s extreme alarm, “that strikes a familiar chord. Now where in thunder have I heard those words before?”

“Things done without example—in their issue

Are to be feared.”

HENRY VIII, 1, 2

“M
URBLES IS COMING ROUND
to dinner tonight, Charles,” said Wimsey. “I wish you’d stop and have grub with us too. I want to put all this family history business before him.”

“Where are you dining?”

“Oh, at the flat. I’m sick of restaurant meals. Bunter does a wonderful bloody steak and there are new peas and potatoes and genuine English grass. Gerald sent it up from Denver specially. You can’t buy it. Come along. Ye olde English fare, don’t you know, and a bottle of what Pepys calls Ho Bryon. Do you good.”

Parker accepted. But he noticed that, even when speaking on his beloved subject of food, Wimsey was vague and abstracted. Something seemed to be worrying at the back of his mind, and even when Mr. Murbles appeared, full of mild legal humour, Wimsey listened to him with extreme courtesy indeed, but with only half his attention.

They were partly through dinner when, apropos of nothing, Wimsey suddenly brought his fist down on the mahogany with a crash that startled even Bunter, causing him to jerk a great crimson splash of the Haut Brion over the edge of the glass upon the tablecloth.

“Got it!” said Lord Peter.

Bunter in a low shocked voice begged his lordship’s pardon.

“Murbles,” said Wimsey, without heeding him, “isn’t there a new Property Act?”

“Why, yes,” said Mr. Murbles, in some surprise. He had been in the middle of a story about a young barrister and a Jewish pawnbroker when the interruption occurred, and was a little put out.

“I knew I’d read that sentence somewhere—you know, Charles—about doing away with the long-lost claimant from overseas. It was in some paper or other about a couple of years ago, and it had to do with the new Act. Of course, it said what a blow it would be to romantic novelists. Doesn’t the Act wash out the claims of distant relatives, Murbles?”

“In a sense, it does,” replied the solicitor. “Not, of course, in the case of entailed property, which has its own rules. But I understand you to refer to ordinary personal property or real estate not entailed.”

“Yes—what happens to that, now, if the owner of the property dies without making a will?”

“It is rather a complicated matter,” began Mr. Murbles.

“Well, look here, first of all—before the jolly old Act was passed, the next-of-kin got it all, didn’t he—no matter if he was only a seventh cousin fifteen times removed?”

“In a general way, that is correct. If there was a husband or wife—”

“Wash out the husband and wife. Suppose the person is unmarried and has no near relations living. It would have gone—”

“To the next-of-kin, whoever that was, if he or she could be traced.”

“Even if you had to burrow back to William the Conqueror to get at the relationship?”

“Always supposing you could get a clear record back to so very early a date,” replied Mr. Murbles. “It is, of course, in the highest degree improbable—”

“Yes, yes, I know, sir. But what happens now in such a case?”

“The new Act makes inheritance on intestacy very much simpler,” said Mr. Murbles, setting his knife and fork together, placing both elbows on the table and laying the index-finger of his right hand against his left thumb in a gesture of tabulation.

“I bet it does,” interpolated Wimsey. “I know what an Act to make things simpler means. It means that the people who drew it up don’t understand it themselves and that every one of its clauses needs a law-suit to disentangle it. But do go on.”

“Under the new Act,” pursued Mr. Murbles, “one half of the property goes to the husband and wife, if living, and subject to his or her life-interest, then all to the children equally. But if there be no spouse and no children, then it goes to the father or mother of the deceased. If the father and mother are both dead, then everything goes to the brothers and sisters of the whole blood who are living at the time, but if any brother or sister dies before the intestate, then to his or her issue. In case there are no brothers or sisters of the—”

“Stop, stop! you needn’t go any further. You’re absolutely sure of that? It goes to the brothers’ or sisters’ issue?”

“Yes. That is to say, if it were you that died intestate and your brother Gerald and your sister Mary were already dead, your money would be equally divided among your nieces and nephews.”

“Yes, but suppose they were already dead too—suppose I’d gone tediously living on till I’d nothing left but great-nephews and great-nieces—would they inherit?”

“Why—why, yes, I suppose they would,” said Mr. Murbles, with less certainty, however. “Oh, yes, I think they would.”

“Clearly they would,” said Parker, a little impatiently, “if it says to the issue of the deceased’s brothers and sisters.”

“Ah! but we must not be precipitate,” said Mr. Murbles, rounding upon him. “To the lay mind, doubtless, the word ‘issue’ appears a simple one. But in law”—(Mr. Murbles, who up till this point had held the index-finger of the right-hand poised against the ring-finger of the left, in recognition of the claims of the brothers and sisters of the half-blood, now placed his left palm upon the table and wagged his right index-finger admonishingly in Parker’s direction)—“in
law
the word may bear one of two, or indeed several interpretations, according to the nature of the document in which it occurs and the date of that document.”

“But in the new Act—” urged Lord Peter.

“I am not, particularly,” said Mr. Murbles, “a specialist in the law concerning property, and I should not like to give a decided opinion as to its interpretation, all the more as, up to the present, no case has come before the Courts bearing on the present issue—no pun intended, ha, ha, ha! But my immediate and entirely tentative opinion—which, however, I should advise you not to accept without the support of some weightier authority—would be, I
think
, that issue in this case means issue
ad infinitum,
and that therefore the great-nephews and great-nieces would be entitled to inherit.”

“But there might be another opinion?”

“Yes—the question is a complicated one—”

“What did I tell you?” groaned Peter. “I
knew
this simplifying Act would cause a shockin’ lot of muddle.”

“May I ask,” said Mr. Murbles, “exactly why you want to know all this?”

“Why, sir,” said Wimsey, taking from his pocket-book the genealogy of the Dawson family which he had received from the Rev. Hallelujah Dawson, “here is the point. We have always talked about Mary Whittaker as Agatha Dawson’s niece; she was always called so and she speaks of the old lady as her aunt. But if you look at this, you will see that actually she was no nearer to her than great-niece: she was the grand-daughter of Agatha’s sister Harriet.”

“Quite true,” said Mr. Murbles, “but still, she was apparently the nearest surviving relative, and since Agatha Dawson died in 1925, the money passed without any question to Mary Whittaker under the old Property Act. There’s no ambiguity there.”

“No,” said Wimsey, “none whatever, that’s the point. But—”

“Good God!” broke in Parker, “I see what you’re driving at. When did the new Act come into force, sir?”

“In January, 1926,” replied Mr. Murbles.

“And Miss Dawson died, rather unexpectedly, as we know, in November, 1925,” went on Peter. “But supposing she had lived, as the doctor fully expected her to do, till February or March, 1926—are you absolutely positive, sir, that Mary Whittaker would have inherited then?”

Mr. Murbles opened his mouth to speak—and shut it again. He rubbed his hands very slowly the one over the other. He removed his eyeglasses and resettled them more firmly on his nose. Then:

“You are quite right, Lord Peter,” he said in a grave tone, “this is a very serious and important point. Much too serious for me to give an opinion on. If I understand you rightly, you are suggesting that any ambiguity in the interpretation of the new Act might provide an interested party with a very good and sufficient motive for hastening the death of Agatha Dawson.”

“I do mean exactly that. Of course, if the great-niece inherits anyhow, the old lady might as well die under the new Act as under the old. But if there was any doubt about it—how tempting, don’t you see, to give her a little push over the edge, so as to make her die in 1925. Especially as she couldn’t live long anyhow, and there were no other relatives to be defrauded.”