Mr. Brimsdown thought it strange, then and afterwards. Next day, after going to the police station and handing Robert Turold’s letter to Inspector Dawfield, he sought out the Penzance lawyer who had drawn up the will. Mr. Bunkom was a spidery little man who spun his legal webs in a small dark office at the top of Market Jew Street, a solicitor with a servile manner but an eye like a fox, which dwelt on his eminent confrère from London, as he perused the will, with an expression which it was just as well that Mr. Brimsdown didn’t see, so sly and savage was it. The Penzance spider knew his business. The will was watertight and properly attested. The bulk of the property was bequeathed to Austin Turold unconditionally. There were only two other bequests. Robert Turold had placed Thalassa and Sisily (“my illegitimate daughter”) on an equality by bequeathing to them annuities of £50 a year each. Austin Turold and Mr. Brimsdown were named as joint executors, and that was all.
Mr. Brimsdown would not have occupied such a distinguished place in the legal profession if he had not been a firm believer in the sacred English tradition that a man has the right to dispose of his own property as he thinks fit. Moreover, his legal mind realized the folly of speculating over the reasons which had prompted this hurried will when the man who had made it was beyond the reach of argument, reproof, or cross-examination.
But the lack of all mention of the title was a different matter, calling for investigation. It was remarkable that a man like Robert Turold should have gone to the grave without binding his heir to prosecute the claim for the Turrald title. To that end Robert Turold had devoted his life, and to the upkeep of the title he had proposed to devote his fortune. The absence of this precaution puzzled Mr. Brimsdown considerably at first, but as he pondered over the matter he began to see the reason. Robert Turold was so close to the summit of his ambition that he had not thought it necessary to take precautions. He was a strong man, and strong men rarely think of death. Once the title was his, it descended as a matter of course to his brother, and then to his brother’s son—provided, of course, that the proofs of his daughter’s illegitimacy were in existence.
That conclusion carried another in its wake. If Robert Turold had not safeguarded his dearest ambition because he hoped to carry it out himself, it followed as a matter of course that he did not take his own life. Mr. Brimsdown had never accepted that theory, but it was strange to have it so conclusively proved, as it were, by the inference of an omission. That brought the lawyer back to the position that some foreboding or warning of his murder had caused Robert Turold to summon him to Cornwall by letter. The next step of his investigations led Mr. Brimsdown to the dead man’s study, where that frantic appeal had been penned.
He engaged a vehicle at the hotel and drove over to Flint House in the afternoon. The impression of that visit remained. Flint House, rising from the basalt summit of the headland like a granite vault, its windows coldly glistening down on the frothy green gloom of the Atlantic far beneath, the country trap and lean black horse at the flapping gate, the undertaker’s man (dissolute parasite of austere Death) slinking out of the house, and Thalassa waiting at the open door for him to approach—all these things were engraved on Mr. Brimsdown’s mind, never to be forgotten. Who was it that had staged such a crime in such a proscenium, in that vast amphitheatre of black rocks which stretched dizzily down beneath those gleaming windows?
Then came other impressions: the dead man upstairs, the disordered dusty study, the stopped clock, the litter of papers. It was in the room where Robert Turold had been murdered that Mr. Brimsdown questioned Thalassa about the letter, and heard with a feeling of dismay his declaration that he had not posted it. Where was the nearest pillar box? Nearly a mile away, at the cross-roads. Could his late master have gone there to post it that night? If he had, Thalassa hadn’t heard him go out. Could anybody else have posted it? No; there was nobody else to post it.
It was like questioning a head on an old Roman coin, so expressionless was Thalassa’s face as he delivered himself of these replies. But the lawyer had the feeling that Thalassa was deriving a certain grim satisfaction from his questioner’s perplexity, and he dismissed him somewhat angrily. Then, when he had gone, he turned to an examination of some of the papers and documents which littered the room, but that was a search which told him nothing.
When the shades of evening warned him to relinquish that task, he told himself that he really ought to go and see Austin Turold before returning to Penzance. But he shrank, with unaccountable reluctance, from the performance of that obvious duty. He felt very old and tired, and his temples were throbbing with a bad nervous headache. He therefore decided to postpone his visit to Austin Turold until later.