“That’s probable. You see, the letter carries over to the second page. Sir John’s private notepaper (he kept some at the office) would fit this letter. The office paper won’t. So much of our stuff is typewritten that all the office paper is the single sheet, square quarto stuff. Our paper never does carry over, because one sheet is one page. Therefore, as he used his private notepaper, with his own address on, to answer it, I should guess it was a reply to a letter which had reached him at home.”
“Baxter, I suppose you haven’t found any letters this could possibly be a reply to?”
“No, there’s nothing. I’ve been through all the letters in his pocket, or that came to the office during the last ten days of his life, and there was nothing at his house. It couldn’t possibly fit anything. Still, Sir John often said that the safest place for a secret was in the fire.”
“Then we had better take it that whatever letter it was a reply to has been destroyed?”
“That seems pretty certainly so. Tempest, can’t you think of any explanation? Can’t you unravel the business? They say you’ve never failed with any one of these murder cases that you’ve tackled. Why have you failed us?”
“No, Baxter, that isn’t cricket. I’m not a detective, and I never undertook to play detective for you. When I have had to get a prisoner off, there’s precious little I stick at. I’ve done all that lay to my hand. I’ve sometimes gone out of my way and done a bit more, but I don’t undertake to do detective work.”
“Tempest, for God’s sake have pity on us! Since this bother cropped up, forty-five clients have formally removed their business from us. Goodness only knows how many more have quietly dropped us without making a fuss and intend never to come back. In twelve months’ time we shan’t have a client left. I’m not married, no more is Marston, and he’s young, but Moorhouse has a wife and family. It’s serious enough for all of us, but it’s Gehenna for him. Can’t you suggest something? What do you think?”
Tempest and the solicitor walked out of Lincoln’s Inn together, and slowly across the fields, and as they went the barrister repeated the story he had argued out with Yardley.
The solicitor stopped and turned and faced the other man on the pavement.
“Tempest, you were present when that trust case was on. Do you remember that woman in court, sitting by herself, heavily veiled at the back, and we wondered what brought her there?”