“I am coming to that,” said Mr. Towkington.
“—the word ‘issue’ continued to mean ‘heirs of the body,’ and that held good till 1926.”
“Stop!” said Mr. Towkington, “issue of the child or children of the deceased certainly meant ‘issue ad infinitum’—but—issue of any person not a child of the deceased only meant the child of that person and did not include other descendants. And that undoubtedly held good till 1926. And since the new Act contains no statement to the contrary, I think we must presume that it continues to hold good. Ha! Come now! In the case before us, you observe that the claimant is not the child of the deceased nor issue of the child of the deceased; nor is she the child of the deceased’s sister. She is merely the grandchild of the deceased sister of the deceased. Accordingly, I think she is debarred from inheriting under the new Act, eh? ha!”
“I see your point,” said Mr. Murbles.
“And moreover,” went on Mr. Towkington, “after 1925, ‘issue’ in a will or deed does not mean ‘issue ad infinitum.’ That at least is clearly stated, and the Wills Act of 1837 is revoked on that point. Not that that has any direct bearing on the question. But it may be an indication of the tendency of modern interpretation, and might possibly affect the mind of the court in deciding how the word ‘issue’ was to be construed for the purposes of the new Act.”
“Well,” said Mr. Murbles, “I bow to your superior knowledge.”
“In any case,” broke in Parker, “any uncertainty in the matter would provide as good a motive for murder as the certainty of exclusion from inheritance. If Mary Whittaker only thought she might lose the money in the event of her great-aunt’s surviving into 1926, she might quite well be tempted to polish her off a little earlier, and make sure.”
“That’s true enough,” said Mr. Murbles.
“Shrewd, very shrewd, ha!” added Mr. Towkington. “But you realise that all this theory of yours depends on Mary Whittaker’s having known about the new Act and its probable consequences as early as October, 1925, eh, ha!”
“There’s no reason why she shouldn’t” said Wimsey. “I remember reading an article in the Evening Banner, I think it was, some months earlier—about the time when the Act was having its second reading. That’s what put the thing into my head—I was trying to remember all evening where I’d seen that thing about washing out the long-lost heir, you know. Mary Whittaker may easily have seen it too.”