“Just so. And of course, we’ve only got his version of the niece and the nurse—and he obviously had what the Scotch call ta’en a scunner at the nurse. We mustn’t lose sight of her, by the way. She was the last person to be with the old lady before her death, and it was she who administered that injection.”
“Yes, yes—but the injection had nothing to do with it. If anything’s clear, that is. I say, do you think the nurse can have said anything that agitated the old lady and gave her a shock that way. The patient was a bit gaga, but she may have had sense enough to understand something really startling. Possibly the nurse just said something stupid about dying—the old lady appears to have been very sensitive on the point.”
“Ah!” said Lord Peter, “I was waiting for you to get on to that. Have you realised that there really is one rather sinister figure in the story, and that’s the family lawyer.”
“The one who came down to say something about the will, you mean, and was so abruptly sent packing.”
“Yes. Suppose he’d wanted the patient to make a will in favour of somebody quite different—somebody outside the story as we know it. And when he found he couldn’t get any attention paid to him, he sent the new nurse down as a sort of substitute.”
“It would be rather an elaborate plot,” said Parker, dubiously. “He couldn’t know that the doctor’s fiancée was going to be sent away. Unless he was in league with the niece, of course, and induced her to engineer the change of nurses.”
“That cock won’t fight, Charles. The niece wouldn’t be in league with the lawyer to get herself disinherited.”
“No, I suppose not. Still, I think there’s something in the idea that the old girl was either accidentally or deliberately startled to death.”
“Yes—and whichever way it was, it probably wasn’t legal murder in that case. However, I think it’s worth looking into. That reminds me.” He rang the bell. “Bunter, just take a note to the post for me, would you?”
“Certainly, my lord.”