“Yes, ma’am. Old Tracy had between two and three millions, I’m told. So with the servants’ bequests and charities included, that only runs to, say, two or three hundred thousand, and the young lady is left very nicely fixed.”
“Servants get much?”
“Griscom, ten thousand, and some stocks besides. Mrs. Fenn about the same. The other servants in proportion, according as to how long they’ve been employed.”
“Well,” Keeley mused, “that’s enough about the conditions of the will to work on. Now, granting greed as the motive, we have your four suspects and Griscom and the cook all possibly guilty.”
“Yes, and you needn’t exclude the other servants. I mean they all had equal motive and the same opportunity. But it never was a servant’s job. Never.”
March looked so positive that Moore asked him to say why.
“No clues,” came the answer. “You see, granting some one of the servants had the ingenuity, the imagination, to cook up this way of doing the killing, he would have taken a hammer and nail from the house stores.”
“Didn’t he?”
“He did not. I’ve combed over the whole kitchen outfit, pantries, offices, storerooms, cellars, garage and every such place, and I know every nail and hammer in the whole place. And there’s no such nail as that one used to end Sampson Tracy’s life in the whole layout.”
“And the hammer?” Moore looked quizzical.